"Games as a service" is fraud

[DalekFlay]

Ross is a very passionate guy, not the typical angry youtube gamer looking for reactions. Seriously, give his videos a watch, dude. And maybe you know how games as a service is a terrible idea, but a lot of young people don't think about it now. Look at how many people today are completely fine with paying for music and movies as a service, choosing short-term convenience over long-term and sacrificing ownership. If more people would think about this then drm-free stores like GoG could become more popular, which would be really cool.

They won't though, because consumers don't care. I wish they cared, but the last 20+ years have taught me they don't. Like... at all. Subscription services and streaming are the future of all media, the only question is how long the old formats limp on.

 

[Melcar]

Ross is a very passionate guy, not the typical angry youtube gamer looking for reactions. Seriously, give his videos a watch, dude. And maybe you know how games as a service is a terrible idea, but a lot of young people don't think about it now. Look at how many people today are completely fine with paying for music and movies as a service, choosing short-term convenience over long-term and sacrificing ownership. If more people would think about this then drm-free stores like GoG could become more popular, which would be really cool.

They won't though, because consumers don't care. I wish they cared, but the last 20+ years have taught me they don't. Like... at all. Subscription services and streaming are the future of all media, the only question is how long the old formats limp on.

No one has bothered to take them to task. Even if some consumer group did, you can bet these fuckers will fight tooth and nail for their "services".

 

[Melcar]

I guess it wasn't legal for the c64 Super Mario Brothers.


7 years down the fucking tubes.

I think that is a bit different since it involves trademarks, which one is obligated by law to enforce.

 

[Wilian]

Can this also be applied to software in general? I assume it can. I mean, you have shit like everything being online only now.

He actually mentions legal cases in the EU and Australia where software in general was defined as a good that you buy and keep forever.

Not only buy and keep but EU also dictated few years ago that you can re-sell your software license legally. It's sadly not been tested in court yet in regards of game licenses you buy from Steam/Origins etc.

 

[FeelTheRads]

How could you even resell stuff from Steam or Origin? Or hell, even GOG? Do they offer offer some kind of option if you're in EU? I don't see anything obvious on GOG for example.
And if there's no option to do that, then it's completely irrelevant if you're legally allowed to or not.

 

[Sceptic]

No one has bothered to take them to task.

Nobody needs to take anyone to task. Consumers need to just decide where they want to spend their money, and what format this money should support.

And the consumers' wallets have spoken.

What some old fossils like you and I think or want doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things. All we can do is vote with our wallet in the hope that someone out there will still make the kind of product we want.

The problem isn't just limited to games incidentally. Netflix almost single-handedly killed our ability to own the movies we want to watch, because this is where consumers started spending their money.

 

[Melcar]

Goddamn consumers.

 

[unfairlight]

How could you even resell stuff from Steam or Origin? Or hell, even GOG? Do they offer offer some kind of option if you're in EU? I don't see anything obvious on GOG for example.

Fuckface Fargo is doing his own scam, where you can "sell" your game by basically just refunding it in cryptocurrency for 60% of the money.

 

[Wilian]

How could you even resell stuff from Steam or Origin? Or hell, even GOG? Do they offer offer some kind of option if you're in EU? I don't see anything obvious on GOG for example.
And if there's no option to do that, then it's completely irrelevant if you're legally allowed to or not.

They don't and they won't because no one has challenged them in court regarding this. But in theory, they should somehow probably try to faciliate it.

https://www.computerworld.com/artic...oftware-licenses-is-legal----even-online.html

With GOG this'd be probably easiest as you can just download the exes. Theoretically you can sell your GOG copy to someone else and then ask GOG to remove it from your game library.

 

[harhar!]

No one has bothered to take them to task.

Nobody needs to take anyone to task. Consumers need to just decide where they want to spend their money, and what format this money should support.

And the consumers' wallets have spoken.

What some old fossils like you and I think or want doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things. All we can do is vote with our wallet in the hope that someone out there will still make the kind of product we want.

The problem isn't just limited to games incidentally. Netflix almost single-handedly killed our ability to own the movies we want to watch, because this is where consumers started spending their money.

I'm pretty liberal/libertarian, so I can see the promise of "vote with your wallet". It basically means to put your money where your mouth is and this works very well for things that primarily affect you. Like if you want more X in a game, buy more games with X in it. But this is a different matter. The damage you do by supporting GAAS is not just done to you but to everyone else as well. With every purchase, you don't just give them the power to fuck you in the ass, but everyone else as well, because if it is profitable enough to do so, they will at some point exclusively provide some content via GAAS. So you don't care and buy GAAS games anyways. This is also why boycotts don't work. You have to take a large cost on yourself to bring about something that everyone else benefits from. Since most humans are egoistical scumbags, they will break the boycott if there is no punishment for doing so. That's why I think that it's a good idea to have some kind of minimum standard for GAAS as laid out in the video.

 

[Valky]

Nobody said a damn thing and sat by gobbling up steam's cock for years, games as a service is a natural continuation of digital rights management that has not only been permissible but embraced by the community affected by it.

 

[Carrion]

Ross is a pretty cool dude who's been ranting about this for years, for good reason. It's nice to see him taking up arms against it.

 

[Valky]

Watched the whole video. I'm surprised he didn't deduce the biggest and primary reason why streaming and service bs are being forced to the point of propaganda, the biggest "pro" for the side of the seller:

If you buy a good, you own that copy of your good and can technically gain independence from the seller through usage of the good you now own. For a game, this means that when you buy the game, you can play the game forever and have no need to buy anything from the seller for the rest of your life if the game is good enough. You have no dependency on the publisher/developer at that point and can cut all ties with them. Making this good behave like a service insofar as the ability to terminate your ownership when desired creates an artificial dependency from you onto the seller, so now you have to come back and give them money if you want the value that good provided to you again. This allows the publisher/developer to make one low effort product, sell it until it gets stale after a few years, and then terminate access to ensure that even people who may have enjoyed it and could happily continue without buying a new game will not be able to access it, which takes care of loose ends that could interfere with the ability to make a new sale. Then they can create a new product to generate a fresh cash inflow and repeat the process, and since they have ensured the customers have no ability to gain independence via divorcing their copy of a product from the seller, a localized monopoly has been created. The entire point is to enslave the customer and force them to keep paying under the unspoken threat that if you leave in an attempt to gain independence, you will never have access to the thing you wanted again. Which is fine and dandy if your business is a brothel, but what is being sold in this instance are binary blobs of 1's and 0's that have no natural restriction on the ability to be replicated or even at the bare minimum, retained in a vacuum and fully usable after a sale has been made.

In my opinion, this is an escalation and even likely natural evolution of the practice of planned obsolescence, which is itself already a predatory and malicious practice. And if that malpractice is already legally protected, we're just on a slippery slope to the further destruction of private property rights.

tl;dr Goyim were created by G*d to be slaves for the Israelites

 

[Nano]

And to top it all off, we're going to be killed by climate change in the next 20 or so years. The world in general is shit right now.

 

[Lord Commissar Alexer]

The future looks really bright...

 

[Sceptic]

I'm pretty liberal/libertarian, so I can see the promise of "vote with your wallet". It basically means to put your money where your mouth is and this works very well for things that primarily affect you. Like if you want more X in a game, buy more games with X in it. But this is a different matter. The damage you do by supporting GAAS is not just done to you but to everyone else as well. With every purchase, you don't just give them the power to fuck you in the ass, but everyone else as well, because if it is profitable enough to do so, they will at some point exclusively provide some content via GAAS. So you don't care and buy GAAS games anyways. This is also why boycotts don't work.

Maybe I wasn't clear, but when I brought up voting with wallet I didn't mean that this was something we as a small community could actually still do something about, it's just fait accompli at this point, the voting has been done, and (as it always is - I don't agree with you that GAAS is different, this kind of voting always affects everyone) it's been done by the majority, and the only thing that can reverse it is if the majority changes their purchasing habits in response to something they perceive as against their individual interests (highly unlikely but it has happened before). So yes a video that exposes how GAAS could be individually harmful to gamers' self-interested could have an effect, but I honestly don't have much hope in that happening. I've seen this pattern of buying things against your long-term interest (whether people are aware of the consequences or not - the former is even more depressing) way too many times, in way too many fields in entertainment (hello "no Steam no buy", hello region-locked movies, hello onerous DRM of all kind, etc etc etc). The one hope I have is that someone will see a niche to exploit eventually, knowing that there are people out there (like us) who don't want GAAS, but even then I am reminded that this hope is fleeting. Look at GOG, it became what it is by essentially being everything that Steam didn't want to be, and 10 years later it's not-so-slowly turning into yet another Steam wannabe. This pattern has repeated itself countless times, especially with gaming companies.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

I know shareware can have x-time to use or x-uses before it doesn't work giving the message to buy (lots of art, video, etc programs that i usually buy since the programs are good); do commercial programs via cd/dvd, or download have the same thing?

Say i buy uber-dungeon demons for 49.99$ and then find out i can only play it 30 times before it says i can't play it anymore? And say it is only downloaded via a steam/stream like account so they know. In fact, you have to be online to activate it.

It borders to be a mmo it seems. I swear i heard of such a program. I would not doubt that eventually all these programs downloaded will.

And i bet somewhere in the EULA there is or will be something to fuck the consumer.

It'll just eat your hard drive data like a munchy mutha fucka!

 

[Melcar]

I know shareware can have x-time to use or x-uses before it doesn't work giving the message to buy (lots of art, video, etc programs that i usually buy since the programs are good); do commercial programs via cd/dvd, or download have the same thing?

Say i buy uber-dungeon demons for 49.99$ and then find out i can only play it 30 times before it says i can't play it anymore? And say it is only downloaded via a steam/stream like account so they know. In fact, you have to be online to activate it.

It borders to be a mmo it seems. I swear i heard of such a program. I would not doubt that eventually all these programs downloaded will.

And i bet somewhere in the EULA there is or will be something to fuck the consumer.

It'll just eat your hard drive data like a munchy mutha fucka!

Usually there is a clause within EULA. Buried deep. Most people don't read it however. Steam has a clause withing their user contract that forbids game sharing/selling for example, and still people ask if they can do it. A lot of current User Agreements have clauses that state that the company can share your data and gather your user statics.

 

[c2007]

I stopped buying games a while ago. It hasn't improved my life, but I haven't been swindled either.

Planned obsolescence is really what will kill us all. Muh profit

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Well, we all die so just live life to the extreme indulgence. 7 deadly sins? Psh, 7 delightful fancies. Game like there ain't no tomorrow.

 

[Chippy]

Everything as a service is a fraud. The biggest one is climate change and electric cars. But I wont derail the thread.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Watched the whole video. I'm surprised he didn't deduce the biggest and primary reason why streaming and service bs are being forced to the point of propaganda, the biggest "pro" for the side of the seller:

If you buy a good, you own that copy of your good and can technically gain independence from the seller through usage of the good you now own. For a game, this means that when you buy the game, you can play the game forever and have no need to buy anything from the seller for the rest of your life if the game is good enough. You have no dependency on the publisher/developer at that point and can cut all ties with them. Making this good behave like a service insofar as the ability to terminate your ownership when desired creates an artificial dependency from you onto the seller, so now you have to come back and give them money if you want the value that good provided to you again. This allows the publisher/developer to make one low effort product, sell it until it gets stale after a few years, and then terminate access to ensure that even people who may have enjoyed it and could happily continue without buying a new game will not be able to access it, which takes care of loose ends that could interfere with the ability to make a new sale. Then they can create a new product to generate a fresh cash inflow and repeat the process, and since they have ensured the customers have no ability to gain independence via divorcing their copy of a product from the seller, a localized monopoly has been created. The entire point is to enslave the customer and force them to keep paying under the unspoken threat that if you leave in an attempt to gain independence, you will never have access to the thing you wanted again. Which is fine and dandy if your business is a brothel, but what is being sold in this instance are binary blobs of 1's and 0's that have no natural restriction on the ability to be replicated or even at the bare minimum, retained in a vacuum and fully usable after a sale has been made.

In my opinion, this is an escalation and even likely natural evolution of the practice of planned obsolescence, which is itself already a predatory and malicious practice. And if that malpractice is already legally protected, we're just on a slippery slope to the further destruction of private property rights.

tl;dr Goyim were created by G*d to be slaves for the Israelites

"Games as a service" is a response by an industry that's gone full digital, to bring back the market model that controlled the sales part of the industry before it went digital.

The biggest problem with digitial distributors is that they have infinite shelf space and an infinite amount of stock. A game in such a store will never stop being sold there due to fresh products coming in or running out of stock.

The old market model in retail stores is exactly what you just described: Old titles that haven't sold are removed from the shelves as new titles come in. Want the old title again? Tough luck, but maybe it'll be available on a budget label or a compilation a few years later.

It wasn't planned obsolence back then because every game came in a physical box on physical media with physical goods, and all of that needed physical space so some form of rotational system had to be in place. But in a digital environment all of those restrictions don't apply, but the beancounters realize that the rotational system had a positive impact on their bottom lines, so they're trying to sneak that back in.

 

[DeepOcean]

To me game as a service is fraud for one simple reason:
Honest service:
Netflix: you pay subscription, for 10 bucks or so a month, you get new movies/series every day.

Gaming industry fraudsters:
You pay 60 bucks as cost of entry, work as a beta tester as the game will take YEARS to be complete/playable and out of Early Access and even when the game is complete, you are supposedly to pay $ 6440,00 dollars to unlock the game you already paid as it is on Mortal Kombat 11 IF and a big IF the game ever will come out of early access as Anthem that is being dump on the dumpster fire by EA right now as all its "updates" are now scheduled for an "indefinite" release. At minimum, Warner Brothers and EA should had been sued by fraud and misleading marketing.

Game as a service is a fraud because they aren't offering service, they are taking a product, cutting it on pieces, using misleading marketing and releasing those cut pieces as "updates" on a "roadmap" then charging ALOT extra for each piece OR they are taking a product, creating artificial barriers so you are forced to pay extra for the game you already paid for.

The idea of the gaming industry has of games as a service is of the Mafia breaking your legs then renting the wheel chair as a service so you have the option of moving instead of crawling in pain on the ground.

 

[DeepOcean]

Nobody said a damn thing and sat by gobbling up steam's cock for years, games as a service is a natural continuation of digital rights management that has not only been permissible but embraced by the community affected by it.

This is a pretty complicated argument to make, one of the reasons Steam gained so much was for the cheaper games, most gamers don't replay games so it is very hard to convince them to pay more for being able to play games years down the road, something they wouldn't do anyway, without mentioning that physical media was a pain in the ass to get especially on developing countries outside Europe for a long time, unfortunately, most gamers chosen the cheap games and I don't blame them, GOG for example, for a long time charged only on dollars here on Brazil and besides, someone could argue as well that this gaming as a service thing started with MMOs and I really doubt that a fierce opposition to steam would stop WoW for being a success.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

The problem is that now, in the post-post-modern capitalism of these days, people are trying to "propagate" the approach "as a service" even outside the digital realm, to the material goods too.