Fantastic post. Sums up my feelings on this whole matter pretty much perfectly.J T wrote:This is about protecting the consumer, in which case government regulation is almost required because companies will do whatever they can to make money. That's the whole point of regulation, and the commonly expressed republican/tea party belief that regulation is unilaterally a bad thing is simply wrong. Sometimes regulation is needed, sometimes it hinders efficient business. It should be examined on a case-by-case basis.StuntDouble wrote:involved, I think that's probably the last thing we want to do. How many industries have actually been helped by more government involvement?
I think this guy is a little nuts, and a little on point. He's mellodramatic about what he believes will happen if games switch to a subscription service and he's spilling over with rage and a bit of paranoia. Nevertheless, he has a valid point that it does appear that the gaming industry is trying to move to a model of gaming where games are a subscription or rental based service and no longer a product. This would have negative consequences for consumer ownership, which will also erode the ability to maintain long-term consumer access to games that are important to gaming history. Also, much of this is happening in sly ways that the majority of consumers are unaware of. For example, nobody advertises that buying some of Capcom's recent games will only allow you to resell part of the game, and therefore immediately has little value on the secondary market. These trends towards the elimination of physical media and even of ownership over digital media are troubling, though digital games services such as gog.com have done quite a lot to actually preserve gaming history while not taking away consumer rights and should be commended.
I like the option to rent and subscribe to games honestly. Most games I played in my youth were rentals, not purchases. Now that I'm older, most of my games come from online Steam sales, which some would argue is also a rental, since the games require an online check in, cannot be resold, and ownership is not guaranteed in the EULA in the event of Valve going under. It does trouble me as a consumer to know that the longevity of my access to my Steam games depends on the longevity of the company's success. It is also unfair to other online game distributors because I feel, whether I'm satisfied with Valve's service or not, that I need to continue to buy my games from them to support them and retain my collection. That being said, Steam is a great service and I'm willing to use it because the low prices offset the risk for me.
I do think consumer rights are not being factored into the equation enough as far as all of these diigital rights business matters are concerned. I don't know if a gamers union is the right tactic, but it might be. I wouldn't want this guy representing me as he's too blustery and prone to exaggeration, but I think people should be educated about how the monetization schemes of the digital age can end up negatively affecting your rights as a consumer. It will take a grassroots kind of consumer movement to spread that message because it won't likely come from the industry, unless there are more companies like GOG that are vocal about this sort of thing.
I admire what this guy is doing, but I worry that he might give off the wrong impression that we're all just overly paranoid and not to be taken seriously.
