IANAL, but is it illegal to have a "Buy" button that is just a disguised "Rent" button?
If not, should we change the law?
qingcharles 2 hours ago [-]
California Assembly Bill 2426 (AB 2426), effective 1 January, 2025. Expands the state's false advertising laws to explicitly ban companies from using words like "buy," "purchase," "own," or "keep" if what the customer is actually getting is a revocable digital license governed by shady T&Cs.
ikekkdcjkfke 2 hours ago [-]
Remember that the power is always with the people. We can enact any law we want
Laws are great and all. But what we really need is a massive boycott. Stop buying shit manufactured or sold by Sony for a year. That alone will probably force them to backtrack every single anti consumer decision they've made recently.
smallmancontrov 3 minutes ago [-]
There's a reason why they teach the prisoner's dilemma on day 1 of business school: a group which is more fragmented has less power. From the consumer perspective, this is why monopolies are bad and this is why boycotts don't work. From the slimy businessman perspective, this is why monopolies are good and boycotts are the only way consumers should be allowed to push back. It's empirically understood to be an ineffective strategy -- which, of course, is usually exactly what the people pushing it want.
MSFT_Edging 10 minutes ago [-]
For the love of god please understand 80% of people are trying to just get on day by day. They don't give a shit about any of this. They probably don't even realize it's happening. Some subset of them might be hit by this but most just don't care.
The point of a government in society is for people who give a shit to guide this kind of thing.
jrjdjdjdkr 4 minutes ago [-]
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inigyou 57 minutes ago [-]
Power in numbers is with the people. Power in votes is with whoever has the votes. Power in money is with the billionaires. Power comes in many forms and isn't fungible.
mingus88 54 minutes ago [-]
ok but who enforces the law?
If you haven’t been paying attention lately, laws are only as good as they are enforced and it has become obvious that the ruling class is not going to enforce laws against themselves.
The solution here is not something most people are willing to inconvenience themselves over
user3939382 46 minutes ago [-]
Laws are meaningless de jure. Especially where megacorps are concerned, the de facto law (ie the only one that matters) is the text, multiplied by the enforcement mechanism, multiplied by the political will to enforce, multiplied by the 10-15 year process of the megacorps draining their legal warchests into challenges and appeals. Then, after all that, maybe… you get a change to corporate behavior.
The laws in this country are primarily written by and for large corporations. They’re not going to meaningfully practically restrain them just because something got passed.
shuwix 50 minutes ago [-]
In democracy, power comes from demos.
In capitalism, power comes from capital.
Demos doesn't have capital.
People never had power.
Whenever they've thought they won ... they just damaged position of someone powerful for someone even more powerful without even knowing it.
giancarlostoro 50 minutes ago [-]
Effective after most people likely bought their movies.
dataflow 2 hours ago [-]
Is it working/being enforced? Anecdotally I haven't seen or heard of any changes in verbiage, but I haven't been paying that much attention.
So they avoided having a "rent" button by using the technically correct "add to cart", "continue to payment" instead of "buy this game", "buy all games in cart", and just have a separate sentence in small grey text that is confusing to most people.
Clearly this law needs to be worded harsher, so the button MUST say "rent" if you are renting.
cptroot 34 minutes ago [-]
In my experience it's a pretty clear warning, but I might not be the best person to judge. The thing to remember is "buying" a revocable license is pretty different from "renting" a temporary license, and those words have pretty different connotations.
mrweasel 2 hours ago [-]
Apple was sued for having revoking access to hundreds of movies that a customer purchased. They tried to claim that "No reasonable consumer would believe' that purchased content would remain on the iTunes platform indefinitely".
So basically "you should have expected to be scammed because everyone knows we are always scamming everyone"
vman81 3 hours ago [-]
They'll argue you're "buying" a license that they can revoke when they feel like it.
My feelings on the matter have been summed up by someone else more clever than me as:
If buying isn't owning, then piracy isn't stealing.
dathinab 39 minutes ago [-]
They will argue that, but this is unlikely to hold up in front of court even in the US.
The problem isn't it being illegal.
But they instead bank on most people not having the means (money/time) or will to sue them over this. Especially given that the actual "damages" you can effectively sue for often relatively small for most users (likely <15€ per movie, so for most account <100€ per person "per situation where you could sue").
And if there is an exception (someones losing hundreds of movies or class action law suite) settling is likely still cheaper for Sony.
This is the problem with many laws the cost of breaching them is often too small (but only IFF you are a huge company with their own lawyer department etc.).
If management would be personally liable with _mandatory prison sentences_ for the CEO/Company Owners if it seems the law was knowingly breached because penalties are cheaper then benefits (or repeated offenses etc.) things probably would look quite different.
Other approaches to counter this includes things like penalties of base+%of yearly revenue, %yearly Profite etc. The problem here is this approaches are often a mix of unfair (e.g. same revenue with large profit margin is penalized way less) and/or can be fudged/circumvented (e.g. if based on profit, but even if based on revenue it can be partially circumvented in some situations. So I think making executive personally liable might be the only way to fix this.
RiverCrochet 27 minutes ago [-]
Then the button should say "Buy Revocable License."
Inevitably people will ask what that means. That will lead to a FAQ on the company's site somewhere, and various videos on the social media explaining it periodically with lots of comments. That will be a good thing.
Corporate marketing teams will eventually settle on something better sounding but technically legal, something like "Premier Anytime Access" for specific movies (versus "Bronze 24-hr Access"), or similar.
kazinator 44 minutes ago [-]
Selling someone a license, and then revoking it is like destruction of property. The injured party is owed a refund in the amount of the present day replacement cost.
It's the same as if someone sold you a toaster with a remote self-destruct feature, and then invoked the self-destruct. They owe you a new toaster.
RiverCrochet 17 minutes ago [-]
IANAL but I bet that:
- If the license terms include a section on termination, and termination is done in accordance with the license terms, it's fine legally.
- Licenses can be transferable but that doesn't make them non-terminable.
I could be wrong, though.
It's pretty crappy that we got to the point that overly simple actions (like clicking on buttons or breaking stickers on packages) can be considered accepting license terms. Is that really a "meeting of the minds"?
inigyou 6 minutes ago [-]
It could be either way. Companies love putting legally invalid terms into license agreements.
pdpi 59 minutes ago [-]
The problem is that we've always been buying licences, it's just that the licence used to be attached to a physical object, so transferring the licence was as easy as transferring ownership of that physical object.
It's never been legal to copy a book, film, or music album and sell the copies, for example, because the licence doesn't allow it. Hence freeware, shareware, and copyleft licences.
dathinab 28 minutes ago [-]
yes, but it was (is?) in many places legal to copy Filmes and Musik albums as backup, and iff the original is lost you can very much sell the backup alongside with the license you did buy (kinda, it gets messy practically).
It only mattered that if you sell it you lose it, i.e. you can't buy 1 sell (or gift) 10.
Similarly in analog times this where not unilaterally cancelled licenses. Which are effectively nothing more then time limited licenses where you just don't know how long. (1: un
In law areas outside of copyright this kind of license cancellation terms are often seen as predatory, fraudulent and abusive practices. And _sometimes outright illegal no matter how well you communicated what the license/contract does_ before it was acquired (in some countries).
(1: unilateral cancellable without a brach of license/contract from you side and some other special edge cases to be more precise)
Which is the crux of the problem, not that it isn't attached to physical media, but that it can be cancelled in a mostly despotic manner and you (often) can't make (relevant) backups or similar to protect the availability of the medium either.
kazinator 28 minutes ago [-]
That is false. It is legal to copy materials that you own, provided you don't redistribute the copy, like for protection against loss. A notable exception of this is the USA DMCA. If, to make a copy, you have to break a copy protection scheme, then you are violating the DMCA.
The license isn't what takes away your permission to redistribute copies; copyright law does that by default. The license is only reminding you that it's not lifting that default, not granting you that permission.
Copying is neither here or there. There is an understanding that when you buy a book, you own the physical thing.
If I sell you a toaster and then remotely cause it to self-destruct, I owe you a new toaster.
Grandparent referenced "if buying isn't owning then copying isn't stealing". I would say that "if buying isn't owning, then stealing isn't stealing".
If a toaster is offered to sale to the public which the seller can remotely destroy at any time, and not pay anyone a cent, and the law upholds that, then it's morally fine to just walk out of their store with that toaster without paying.
41 minutes ago [-]
pennomi 12 minutes ago [-]
It’s not about transfer, it’s about being practically irrevocable.
redsocksfan45 41 minutes ago [-]
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15155 50 minutes ago [-]
"Stealing" in basically all common law jurisdictions requires intent to deprive the rightful owner of the property.
dathinab 23 minutes ago [-]
yes digital piracy was never stealing, but a mixture of contractual breach, copyright infringement and (illegally) causing financial damages through (illegally) causing lost sales.
Hence why you don't get tried for theft when you commit digital piracy. Which, as absurd as it might sound, sometimes (/in some cases) would be better to be tried for due to very unbalanced laws.
But also it should be pretty obvious that this isn't what people mean when they say "if buying isn't owning, then piracy isn't stealing" and a intentionally misinterpretation of statements based by nitpicking formulations is neither contributing anything meaningful nor is it appreciated (in most situations).
2 hours ago [-]
Garvi 3 hours ago [-]
Copying something isn't stealing by any legal definition. It's copyright infringement.
eloisius 3 hours ago [-]
I’m just collecting training data for my AI.
ivan_gammel 2 hours ago [-]
authentic intelligence?
reactordev 1 hours ago [-]
automated intercept... or acquisition interface. /s
IncreasePosts 1 hours ago [-]
"you wouldn't copyright infringe a car" doesn't have the same ring to it
RajT88 2 hours ago [-]
You wouldn't steal a baby
kps 11 minutes ago [-]
That's a derivative work of two parties’ IP.
dantillberg 1 hours ago [-]
It will be quite the novel legal case the first time someone makes an unauthorized copy of a baby.
comrade1234 2 hours ago [-]
I might download one.
BigTTYGothGF 1 hours ago [-]
I wouldn't buy one either (it's been illegal in my country for ~150 years).
yladiz 1 hours ago [-]
Speak for yourself.
iwontberude 56 minutes ago [-]
Piracy isn’t stealing because copies don’t destroy the original
kazinator 39 minutes ago [-]
The proliferation of copies economically devalues the originals.
imglorp 2 hours ago [-]
I'm hoping someday this will go the same way as other companies trying to redefine "unlimited", "free", or "lifetime". I hope lawyers reclaim "buy", "own", and "purchase" from shitbag marketers back into contract law, where they have English meanings.
At the very least, if Sony yanks your purchase, they should merely refund it in full.
teeray 2 hours ago [-]
A $10m fine for mobile telcos is a rounding error. “Softer quarter due to outstanding legal and regulatory obligations…” The fines need to be a standard percentage of income or the personal assets / freedom of officers needs to be on the line if we want those punishments to change behavior.
account42 1 hours ago [-]
It really should be fines plus ALL money gained through the illegal activity. If you steal a car you don't get to pawn the stereo, give back the money gained and then drive off into the sunset.
Laurel1234 19 minutes ago [-]
Jail time (hard jail time, not that country club bullshit) for the entire C-suite and you might see some change.
Laurel1234 23 minutes ago [-]
> The fines need to be a standard percentage of income or the personal assets / freedom of officers needs to be on the line
This is the obvious solution to most problems but of course they're the ones writing the laws so it'd never happen in a trillion years.
amiga386 1 hours ago [-]
Not even "Rent". Rentals are priced by the time you rent for. If you want to rent something for 30 years, you can, and you'll keep paying for 30 years.
This is a one-time cost and you just don't know when they're going to snatch it back from you. They won't tell you. They won't even give you a notice period. They don't know themselves. They only find out when the licensor they're sublicensing from demands "too much" for ongoing licensing and they just give up and pretend they didn't sell you that and take your money.
The button would have to be "Licence, subject to unilateral revocation at any time."
inanutshellus 3 hours ago [-]
"we're training the public that they're 'buying' a revokable license, not the song" ~MPAA ;)
chillfox 1 hours ago [-]
Pretty sure you could get some action from the ACCC here in Australia if you go through the process to lodge a complaint.
NoMoreNicksLeft 1 hours ago [-]
If Walmart sold you a lawnmower, but you had to leave the lawnmower in their store, would you consider it your property just because they let you start it up and hear it rumble?
If you wouldn't do that for Walmart, why would you do it for Sony?
Razengan 2 hours ago [-]
Unrelated, but that is such an unfortunate acronym.. There's no way the people who perpetuated it didn't know what they were doing
I propose, let's see..
Definitely Isn’t Legal Doctrine, Obviously
or.. Based Only On Basic Speculation
perhaps Consult Official Counsel, Kindly
or more succinct, This Isn’t Trained Solicitor Advice
Without laws to force companies to honor this, The only reasonable answer to this ownership issue will end up being piracy. Also, “Buying” the movie and making a copy of it for personal use shouldn’t be illegal.
stronglikedan 2 minutes ago [-]
> Also, “Buying” the movie and making a copy of it for personal use shouldn’t be illegal.
Unless I missed something recently, it's not illegal. You've always had the right to make backups of content that you purchased legally. It's the distribution that has been illegal.
trencedamp 3 hours ago [-]
I read recently that PlayStation users are moving to PC en masse, and also Xbox has been gutted by layoffs, and there's a backlash against Nintendo for the switch 2 pricing.
Is the age of the console finally coming to an end?
redwall_hp 2 hours ago [-]
It's just loud Internet people. The Switch 2 is the second fastest selling game system of all time, and is keeping up with the trajectory of the first Switch, which shipped the most units of any gaming system. It'll probably get further boosts as Splatoon Raiders comes out (Splatoon is huge in Japan) and other anticipated titles.
I can't say I know anyone IRL who has any interest in leaving PlayStation. Nobody buys movies there and people who care about physical games are a minority...there are already Slim models without optical drives and GameStops are mostly Funko Pops because most people buy games online. It's too soon to have actual concrete data besides useless internet sentiment reporting though. And a lot of that is just vague anger about prices for all computing hardware being up...and everything else in the US.
We're also at the ending stages of the PS5 lifecycle, but before a PS6 announcement. (With an unprecedented price increase this late in the cycle.) So there's no buzz about what's next, a large base of people who already have the existing thing, and an expectation that it will cost more.
Meanwhile, the anticipated Grand Theft Auto 6 is on the way, and a PC release isn't on the table anytime soon.
treyd 3 hours ago [-]
Consoles made sense as a product category where specialized graphics hardware was not generally available for consumer PCs.
We have this now, every PC has some kind of graphics hardware, and has for many years. Consoles have been riding on their momentum of their brands, but the technical justification for their product category hasn't existed for 15+ years now.
dpoloncsak 3 hours ago [-]
The main thing consoles have going for them, imo, is the standardization of hardware. It's very easy to say "Yes this game will run on my console at 60 FPS because its identical to the other consoles where it runs at 60 FPS." Differing builds and drivers are not really a concern in the console world, where-as they are in the PC world.
Some console gamers seem to think PC gaming requires hours of fiddling with settings and drivers. I think we've all had that experience on PC (cough Bethesda cough), but I doubt to the degree the console-side would have you believe. Most AAA games will self-optimize their settings to a playable state, and indie games don't tend to demand more than your standard gaming laptop can provide...but I'm sure we've all been burned some 10-odd years ago buying a Steam game that just wouldn't run on your iGPU...that experience sticks around in the brain a while
bsimpson 7 minutes ago [-]
This is also why Steam hardware matters.
If something runs on a Steam Deck, you can be sure it will run on your >= Steam Deck-equivalent device.
robertlagrant 2 hours ago [-]
That's one thing. The other is price. Consoles can be sold at a loss, particularly early in their 10-year cycle, when early on the loss is high, but close to the end of the cycle the loss is minimal, and so they appear much cheaper.
nemomarx 2 hours ago [-]
Given recent price rises for console hardware I think they're struggling with that too though. The model doesn't work as well if the components get more expensive over time and not less?
dpoloncsak 2 hours ago [-]
Oh, for sure! It's not getting any better with PC part prices lately either...
I've never considered that my old 360 was probably sold at a loss, knowing I'd buy LIVE and all the games they take a cut/license fee off of, but that makes complete sense to me
Tsiklon 2 hours ago [-]
This cycle is different. Prices have increased for both Sony and Microsoft’s consoles and no higher efficiency versions have been released (ala the PS3, X360).
galleywest200 2 hours ago [-]
Sony released the PS5 Slim earlier this cycle.
thinkingQueen 2 hours ago [-]
Isn’t PS5 Pro a higher efficiency version?
Izkata 1 hours ago [-]
During college, before I switched to linux, the DRM packaged with Spore bricked my computer in the middle of a semester. That's what turned me off of PC gaming.
lightedman 14 minutes ago [-]
"Differing builds and drivers are not really a concern in the console world"
Let me tell you, as someone that repairs a TON of XBox 360s, this comment is very, VERY wrong. The GPU isn't even the same revision between the same batch runs. Did you get Xenos? Zeus? Jupiter? That determined one set of things needed for install/refurbish. Is that a Valhalla motherboard in your hands? That just limited you to a very narrow and specific set of hardware you could utilize.
Oh and performance between all of those models varied WILDLY. Silicon lottery is a fucking JOKE on the XBox 360.
realusername 2 hours ago [-]
> It's very easy to say "Yes this game will run on my console at 60 FPS because its identical to the other consoles where it runs at 60 FPS." Differing builds and drivers are not really a concern in the console world, where-as they are in the PC world.
It used to be a selling point of console indeed, however nowadays console are separated by Pro/Non-pro, different revisions and you aren't really guaranteed on how well your game is going to run unless you watch a Youtube let's play of the game you want.
mvkel 2 hours ago [-]
> Consoles made sense as a product category where specialized graphics hardware was not generally available for consumer PCs.
This has almost never been true. GPUs existed, and were being used, before the N64.
Your comment also begs the question that the console consumer has transitioned to a gaming pc. They haven't. Gaming PC sales (and hardware) are at all-time lows, except for GPUs, which should probably be renamed to Model Training Units.
I would posit that what we're seeing is a reflection of a content problem, not hardware. Video games have gone the way of Hollywood, with sequels and derivatives, and an uninterested consumer base. People would rather watch a YouTube video of someone playing a video game than play a video game.
Sohcahtoa82 1 hours ago [-]
> GPUs existed, and were being used, before the N64.
Video cards existed, but 3D accelerators didn't really catch on until the 3dfx Voodoo, which came out about the same time as the N64. Even Quake II which came out a year later still offered software rendering.
> Your comment also begs the question that the console consumer has transitioned to a gaming pc. They haven't.
I'm only a single point of data, but I was a console gamer that transitioned to PC gaming, but that transition happened during the N64/PSX era. It was near the end of the PS2 cycle that I was full PC.
> Gaming PC sales (and hardware) are at all-time lows
Because prices are at all-time highs. I have a monster PC that I probably spent around $6,000 building, but with prices skyrocketing, it'd run me $10,000 to build it today. A few months ago, it would have been $11,000.
> Video games have gone the way of Hollywood, with sequels and derivatives, and an uninterested consumer base.
In the AAA world, this is true. So many gamers that only play Call of Duty, Fortnite, Minecraft, or a sports game. For CoD and the sports games, they reliably buy the latest release every year despite the lack of anything really being different.
But the Indie world is huge and full of innovation. Balatro, Stardew Valley, Disco Elysium, Slay the Spire, Cuphead, I could go on.
> People would rather watch a YouTube video of someone playing a video game than play a video game.
I don't think that's true at all. Maybe for high-level play, or if the streamer has highly entertaining commentary, but otherwise definitely not true.
Chinjut 2 hours ago [-]
What PC GPU was in mainstream consumer use before the N64?
ssl-3 1 hours ago [-]
The 3dfx Voodoo1 was very mainstream (and market-defining, even). It predates the N64.
Sohcahtoa82 1 hours ago [-]
This is incorrect.
N64 came out in the USA in September 1996.
3dfx Voodoo was released to consumers in October 1996.
ssl-3 1 hours ago [-]
Oh noes!
redsocksfan45 27 minutes ago [-]
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moger777 3 hours ago [-]
I think they still make sense for the non technical user. Having an idiomatic control makes setup far easier than on a PC and the UI for a console is designed to be used with a controller instead of a keyboard and mouse. This makes dealing with a television easier. I don't see consoles disappearing ever for those reasons.
mathieuh 2 hours ago [-]
Also isn't a huge (maybe the largest?) audience for gaming these days children playing games like Roblox and Minecraft and Fortnite etc? For whom it's parents buying the equipment, so unless you have a tech-savvy parent they're likely to just buy a console.
inigyou 52 minutes ago [-]
The largest gaming market, by about an order of magnitude, is mobile games like Candy Crush. But we should differentiate the market further because most of us probably don't want to be making Candy Crush.
naravara 2 hours ago [-]
I think those games are mostly played on tablets these days.
But there might be a generational change coming. Basically the entire cohort of parents in my kids’ kindergarten is much more intentional about what kinds of games they’re playing and how they’re spending their “screen time.” I see a lot more people just giving their kids retro-consoles and emulation rather than setting them loose on the kiddie grooming and dopamine receptor-frying skinner-boxes.
I suppose it’s one of the benefits of having a generation of parents who grew up with formative memories of playing video games themselves combined with a growing awareness of UI dark patterns and their long term impacts on cognitive development and well-being.
cwnyth 3 hours ago [-]
-----
nirvdrum 2 hours ago [-]
I don’t think the appeal is just to the less technically inclined masses. I’m a developer with a MacBook Pro and a Linux workstation. Proton has come a long way, but consoles just work for the most part; I never have to question whether the game will function and perform well on the console (setting aside the random buggy messes we see).
Then there’s the convenience. I don’t want to play games where I work. I want to play on my TV. I have no interest in moving my workstation into my living room. Streaming with Moonlight works well enough, but there’s still lag. Even if I wanted to move my PC to the living room, the setup isn’t as nice. The Steam Machine has HDMI CEC and can power on with a controller — all the major consoles have had that for years.
Even if I accepted all that, no one else in my household could play anything while I’m working on my computer.
Things are a little weird now. If I’m going to have to go all digital, Steam Family is by far the best option of those with DRM. But, due to the astronomical cost of components, consoles are still pretty attractive.
inigyou 52 minutes ago [-]
> I never have to question whether the game will function and perform well on the console
Thanks to recent moves by Sony, this is no longer the case!
nirvdrum 36 minutes ago [-]
Can you please elaborate? The recent moves I’ve seen have been announcing a shift to digital-only and another about clawing back movie purchases. Neither are appealing to me, but also aren’t related to game performance or compatibility.
afavour 2 hours ago [-]
That doesn't really make sense. Consoles have always occupied a different space to PCs, not least because they plug into living room TVs. Very few people are going to trade that for a (considerably more expensive) PC.
Gaming PCs also require specialized knowledge, more maintenance, etc etc. Consoles are pick up and go. I very much doubt they're dead yet.
dabinat 36 minutes ago [-]
Another appeal of consoles is being able to sit on a couch and play. Most PC chairs are not as comfortable.
bluescrn 3 hours ago [-]
Consoles don't have true 'generational leaps' any more either, the huge leaps forward in tech used to drive excitement/sales.
Now we get incremental improvements, cross-generation games, and backwards compatibility. And AAA game development isn't exactly doing well these days.
throwaway613746 2 hours ago [-]
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mschuster91 2 hours ago [-]
The thing with PCs is... they are open. Open means piracy and more importantly it means cheats.
A console is a far easier thing to defend against cheaters than a PC - absent true hardware vulnerabilities (which become more and more expensive, now that stuff like voltage glitching, clock cutting and whatnot is all known and accounted for), you are basically limited to botted input and AI-assistance based on what can be seen on the screen.
naravara 2 hours ago [-]
Specialized graphics hardware hasn’t been the selling point of having a console since at least 2002 with the first XBox.
The selling point of consoles is that they’re a software platform, with development incentives, standardized hardware, standardized UI conventions, and a centralized storefront to be able to conveniently and natively play stuff on your TV without fussing about.
Valve has barely started to muscle in on the platform benefits of gaming on a PlayStation or XBox, but the more they start to do so the more they end up making design trade-offs that start to look like another console.
ryanm101 3 hours ago [-]
To be fair had RAM prices not screwed up the steam machine consoles would have been dooms earlier. They are about to enter a slow decline before death
inigyou 2 hours ago [-]
Consoles are suffering from the RAM price crisis just as much as PCs.
fg137 1 hours ago [-]
> PlayStation users are moving to PC en masse
Source? Is that reddit?
It simply doesn't make sense.
rvz 42 minutes ago [-]
HNers continue to never know that they are in their own bubble. The same reason why Linux on the Desktop is an ongoing meme.
mghackerlady 2 hours ago [-]
Nintendo will always exist, which I'm mostly okay with
alexchantavy 39 minutes ago [-]
> PlayStation users are moving to PC en masse
PC is even more digital-only than Playstation. No one buys physical games on PC. The only difference is that Valve has been a very good steward over Steam. Theoretically, PC can get as enshittified as PS.
I guess there are other DRM-based purchasing platforms, and there's also DRM free ones like GOG so PC gamers have choice, but those feel niche mostly.
Hitton 3 hours ago [-]
I wouldn't be surprised if consoles got replaced by video game streaming. Not the next generation and probably not even the generation after that, but that will be most likely it.
zarzavat 2 hours ago [-]
Video game streaming requires a high quality internet connection to a nearby data center. It can work in certain places but there's always going to be places where it doesn't work, and consoles don't have that problem.
DiskoHexyl 17 minutes ago [-]
Well Sony is actively working on that problem- the plebs in these internet-starved countries won’t be playing anyway, as with no optical drive in the future ps6 users are going to be tied to PSN which isn’t available on half the planet.
Jokes aside I do agree that streaming doesn’t work reliably for all game genres and client geographies, mostly due to latency
qwerpy 2 hours ago [-]
That backlash was nearly entirely on that other social media website that HN hates being compared to. And yet again, not representative of actual people. The xbox part may be true. I’d be extremely surprised if any PlayStation users in volume move to PC, that might be another loud opinion from that crowd due to the physical disc outrage. They would pay twice as much, have a less seamless experience, and still have worse graphics/performance.
I say this as a primarily pc gamer. It’s not for most people.
bluescrn 3 hours ago [-]
PC gaming isn't exactly in a healthy place either (at least when it comes to hardware pricing/availability). Post-Covid GPU prices were bad enough even before the AI bubble ruined everything.
cryo32 3 hours ago [-]
Yeah. I gave up a couple of years ago after Epic broke my account and I lost my purchases irrecoverably. I have actually started playing board games with people now. This is so much better for me. And cheaper. And you can't taken them away.
bluescrn 3 hours ago [-]
Retro gaming is an increasingly popular option, too. These days I have more fun messing with Amigas, C64s, and cheap emulation handhelds than big modern games.
Retro hardware prices have been going up fairly significantly though, especially for Amiga stuff.
rrgok 3 hours ago [-]
I would say the future is cloud gaming.
trinsic2 2 hours ago [-]
The cloud gaming echo chamber has conveniently arrived to save the day by mimicking the solution to fix the problem the same industry created. Problem, Reaction, Solution.
jayd16 1 hours ago [-]
Its ok for some thing but the lag is simply too much for popular genres of games.
inigyou 50 minutes ago [-]
If cloud means AWS then probably, but I think the serious cloud gaming people are generally trying to get you connected by fiber to a data center in the same city.
criddell 2 hours ago [-]
Sadly, the future might be phone gaming. The mobile gaming market is as big as the console and PC markets combined.
8fingerlouie 2 hours ago [-]
Phone gaming with a USC-C display or simply cast to the TV, and Bluetooth remotes. It might not be as bad as it sounds. My phone has 12GB RAM, 256GB NVME SSD, a decent GPU and a dedicated AI chipset as well.
Sure, it won’t beat a tricked out gaming PC with some $4000 GPU in it, but it will probably be competitive with console gaming. Granted, the PS5 is 5-6 years old by now, but my phone has more power in every measure.
My “dream” everyday device is still a phone that docks with a display, keyboard and mouse, and magically transforms into a desktop OS. On the to mobile apps would allow access to the same data, but touch optimized instead.
naravara 2 hours ago [-]
These are basically different markets that only compete with each other because there are finite hours in the day to engage with media, not because they’re offering variations on the same thing.
It’s similar to comparing Netflix to the Criterion Streaming platform. Technically you’re doing the same thing, sitting on the couch watching a big screen, but the experience being pitched is a totally different one and the target customer doesn’t really overlap.
criddell 23 minutes ago [-]
I was thinking more about competition with suppliers than consumers.
If you are a games studio and have resources for three projects this year, do your investors want to see a phone, PC, or console game?
ssl-3 1 hours ago [-]
They compete for finite dollars, too.
There was a time when regular families had desktop computers at home. The marketing was intense, the machines were expensive, and the sales numbers were real. The PC was the gateway to all of the spoils of the internet and things were booming.
Now families tend to have a collection expensive personal pocket supercomputers, instead. It's hard to justify the cost of a properly-stodgy computer when everything is online and the machines that everyone already has in their pockets are Good Enough to get things done (including entertainment).
inigyou 49 minutes ago [-]
I suspect people who've gotten any depth into both desktop and mobile gaming don't think they're even remotely substitutes.
ssl-3 36 minutes ago [-]
Gaming on a phone is definitely not for me. I've been using PCs for several decades; it's possible that mobile gaming will never be my jam.
But I can accept that I'm not everyone.
I suspect that we'll have whole generations of people who manage to grow up and grow old and without ever having, or even seeking, the opportunity to spend quality time gaming on PCs.
I think that's alright. Things are allowed to change.
inigyou 26 minutes ago [-]
I'm pretty sure it's just exposure and time. Mobile is a great format for keeping yourself entertained on a subway. Desktop or console is a great format for actual games. People have more phones now because you need phones and you don't need desktops - that has nothing to do with the enjoyment you have gaming on each.
You used to be able to dial TIM on a landline phone to check the time (for free?). Then you (if you were a computer nerd) checked it on your computer, then on your phone. Because that's what was available. There was no connection between knowing the time and landline phones - people just had landline phones so it was a convenient way to deliver the service. That's how it is with mobile games now.
Remember Java and Flash applets? You could make anything you wanted as a native application, but RuneScape took off because you didn't have to install it.
naravara 23 minutes ago [-]
The Steam Deck is basically a way to play PC games on mobile. You can imagine a world where people can just plug their smartphone into a KVM and just use it as a gaming PC. Modern phones have enough computing power to play most games being produced today since a lot of them are indie or B titles that aren’t actually that intensive. And even the intensive AAA ones, if developers were willing to optimize for it and go for lower res graphics they could do those too. And they can definitely play any game that’s more than 10 years old.
nazgulsenpai 2 hours ago [-]
Sadly, I agree with you. I don't like it, but it seems pretty clear.
add-sub-mul-div 3 hours ago [-]
People age out of wanting to sit in their bedroom with a handheld and become adults who have living rooms. For home gaming there will always be demand to play games on a real sized screen.
saidinesh5 2 hours ago [-]
I think the steam deck proved otherwise too..
I haven't had enough motivation to sit on my couch and game after a long day ..
But the same game, in bed, on my deck was so much nicer..
All I can now say is having a dedicated device, that's not your laptop/computer to play games is definitely a market - be it Steam machine (/custom builds), hand held gaming, or just regular consoles..
inigyou 2 hours ago [-]
Yeah so get a PC and install some games
xvxvx 2 hours ago [-]
They removed ‘A Shaun The Sheep Movie: Farmageddon’. OK Sony, this is war.
robin_reala 3 hours ago [-]
Obviously media permanence is the best solution, but in the absence of that we just need laws that say that if the purchase isn’t time limited to something a reasonable user would consider a rental (48hrs? a week?) then companies that withdraw access rights need to refund in full the purchase cost.
joshuaissac 17 minutes ago [-]
There are services like Movies Anywhere and UltraViolet (now defunct) that store a licence when the user purchases one from an in-network licensor. Then the user can access the content via any supported platform.
The problem is that these are not legally mandated, so they can shut down (as UltraViolet did). If the ability to move the licence to another platform is mandated by law as a condition of continued copyright protection, this problem would largely disappear.
jagged-chisel 3 hours ago [-]
Let's add inflation to that. Or charge interest for the loan.
tencentshill 49 minutes ago [-]
People owning their own media was always a pain to these companies. They tried to make disposable DVDs at one point!
15155 47 minutes ago [-]
What a fun balance sheet that will create. Seems easier to just exit the business.
bell-cot 58 minutes ago [-]
> need to refund in full the purchase cost.
In practical terms, the logistics of many-years-later refunds would be unwieldy at best. Do the purchase records still exist? What if I no longer have that credit card or email address? How can you prove you're the heir of the deceased? What if I now live in a country where the "deletion" status is different? And how could you stop all the scammers who smelled free money?
Alternative: The gov't randomly picks 24 citizens from a pool of applicants who reasonably prove that they were harmed by the deletion. Those 24 are given legal authority to fiat-revoke all copyright protection on a "reasonable and proportional" number of the deleting corporation's currently copyrighted works. Or upstream of them, as "appropriate".
inigyou 47 minutes ago [-]
Doesn't matter. It should be up to the corporation to figure it out or else it's illegal and they get fined 300% of their total yearly revenue for each affected person.
drstewart 2 minutes ago [-]
Boom! Big and tough enforcement, I like it.
Similarly, we should put in a law to force consumers who post bad reviews to prove they actually transacted with the business. If they can't, they have to go to every person who saw the review and personally retract it.
Can't figure out who saw it? Tough. It's up to you to figure out, or else it's illegal and they get 5000 years in prison for every view it got.
kmeisthax 3 hours ago [-]
The most frustrating thing about all of this is that if I'd published a game on PlayStation and then told Sony to rip it out of people's libraries, they'd tell me to pound sand. The contracts you sign to ship games on PlayStation specifically include redownload rights. So Sony knows this is a problem, and yet for whatever reason decided NOT to secure the rights they'd need for the digital purchases to actually work like a purchase.
k_roy 3 hours ago [-]
This is nothing new and the reason I went from being the biggest media collector to collecting nothing now.
To put it in perspective, I bought Get Him to the Greek on Prime video shortly after it came out.
A month later, the "exclusive broadcast rights" changed, and I was no longer able to access it.
If you bought movies on a digital platform that would later go under (could be Sony one day), what would happen to your collection? Is it transferable in any way? If not, it's already a risk no matter which platform you use.
lemoncookiechip 3 hours ago [-]
If they offered refunds this would still be terrible.
They don't even offer refunds.
21asdffdsa12 2 hours ago [-]
Once its deleted it becomes a indefinite p(irate) license.
pluralmonad 3 hours ago [-]
Hopefully most of these folks that have been scammed know how to sail the high seas.
chuckadams 36 minutes ago [-]
Which is a bit tricky on a Playstation. Sure you can scrounge up some Jellyfin-ish sort of thing, but most people buy on the console platform because they specifically don't want to jump through hoops.
bogometer 3 hours ago [-]
if you cant hold it your hands, you don't own it. used dvd and bluray on ebay are cheaper anyway. another underutilized resource - the public library - mine has a huge catalog of movies you can borrow for free.
teroshan 2 hours ago [-]
> another underutilized resource - the public library
As an indication of where things are going on this front, from the same publisher: Sony announced that games are not going to get distributed as physical copies anymore. So no new video games to be borrowed from public libraries, and even if you can borrow older games the new Playstations probably won't even have a disk tray to read them.
Whatever your stance on video games being something that is worth having in a library is, if they could get away with it that's probably their ideal end game for movies as well.
inigyou 46 minutes ago [-]
Time for libraries to start carrying hard drives full of pirated copies, I guess.
cliglot 3 hours ago [-]
Sadly mine has awful, inconvenient hours because it became the local fight club for teenagers.
qingcharles 2 hours ago [-]
Depending on your library, you might be able to stream the same movies online for free. Check their web site.
naravara 2 hours ago [-]
If you can hold it in your hands you still might not necessarily own it. Remember DivX? (The medium, not the codec).
ssl-3 1 hours ago [-]
Remember Meraki?
acd 3 hours ago [-]
Isnt there an issue with "Buy" and different countries marketing laws? Ie it implies "Hold" or "TemporaryKeep".
Guess it will be an upswing of BlueRay movies. Already happening with LPs and CDs
tremon 2 hours ago [-]
This anti-consumer stuff also applies to physical Blu-rays: each BD can contain a revocation list of player keys and distributor keys, and official players are required to update their keylists from that. Every time you insert a new disc in your player, you're playing russian roulette with your existing library.
toast0 1 hours ago [-]
Blu-Ray key revocation does not work that way. Players with revoked keys simply can't play discs that were encrypted to disallow them.
Discs that worked with a player will continue to work, as long as the physical mechanisms are still good.
Technically, maybe, since the player authenticates with the drive, if you updated the firmware on the drive you could lockout the player. I could see windows update potentially helpfully pushing a bd-rom drive firmware update, but it's not happening on a standalone player.
It's not ideal that your existing player might not read new discs, but hopefully you use your discs soon after purchase and you could return them if you can't get a firmware update with a new key. (Of course, I'm guilty of buying discs to watch eventually; will be annoying if my keys were revoked)
galleywest200 2 hours ago [-]
How does that work if my player is offline? A dedicated BluRay player has no reason to connect to the internet.
inigyou 45 minutes ago [-]
Each disc contains the latest revocation list at the time of its creation. If you put in a disc with a newer revocation list, your player updates. Same thing was done on the Nintendo Wii.
1970-01-01 47 minutes ago [-]
boolean bought = true;
boolean owns = false;
if (bought && owns) {
System.out.println("Purchase resulted in ownership.");
} else if (bought) {
System.out.println("Purchase did not result in ownership. You have rented.");
mortenjorck 3 hours ago [-]
As bad as this is, it’s worth noting that this is the same incident that was widely reported earlier this month. Sony has only rugpulled hundreds of purchased titles from customers once this year.
So far.
bluescrn 3 hours ago [-]
But their timing was amazing, doing it just days before they announced that they were ending releases of games on physical media.
CafeRacer 3 hours ago [-]
I've sold my PS5 several months ago. You can get a pretty gameable laptop and gog/steam prices are better. And I can install mods. Tree Sentinel Thomas Mod for example.
butterfi 2 hours ago [-]
Its all a bit hand wavy nonsense. Own a physical copy? How long until its unplayable because either the media corrupts or the player isn't available? The only real "ownership" is the IP, everything else is just renting.
cesaref 2 hours ago [-]
All information is ephemeral, but I don't honestly think that argument holds much weight here.
I'm currently listening to a record which was pressed before I was born, and that will outlast me. My CDs were ripped around 2000 to a drive and i've streamed then since. I've still got the CDs though, and the last time I played one it worked fine on my 1989 vintage transport.
I think i'm good.
another-dave 1 hours ago [-]
Why wouldn't a player be available though? CD/DVD players won't just suddenly stop working. My CDs and CD players at home from the 1990s are still working completely fine.
If they do want to posit it as this, I'd personally be fine if they said "a CD will work for 100k plays before corrupting" so you'll have 100,000 credits to stream The Wizard of Oz before you need to purchase it again.
But they need to say that upfront.
1970-01-01 28 minutes ago [-]
A laser-engraved QR code can store 3KB, enough for an entire ebook. The file format isn't the problem here.
atomicnumber3 50 minutes ago [-]
I trust the pressing on a CD or vinyl to remain readable SIGNIFICANTLY more than I trust any corporation to do literally anything, including "continue to exist".
nemomarx 2 hours ago [-]
own a physical copy, rip it into a digital format. legal and works pretty well to keep up with the times
mrguyorama 23 minutes ago [-]
The DVDs I got in my childhood 20 years ago still work just fine, the drives to read them are $20 or less, and ripping them to a format I can use more conveniently and backup however I want is a single button click.
Plastic discs are the optimum data distribution format. They degrade in the same time frame as a paper book, essentially lifetime, you retain legal rights like the first sale doctrine, you can easily format shift for safety and storage, and nobody can take any of that from you ever, and you can use that data however you like, as long as you aren't trying to sell bootlegs.
Books and plastic discs are infinitely better than the digital realm. The consumer rights are so much stronger and better.
CommanderData 2 hours ago [-]
Everyone of these stories makes a great case for piracy. Torrents or illegal online streaming sites.
inigyou 44 minutes ago [-]
It truly does
chaostheory 2 hours ago [-]
I guess they want the masses to start sailing the high seas again
shevy-java 2 hours ago [-]
Well - I actually think the problem is not Sony being malicious here, per se, but the legislation. There has to be a guarantee as if it were a physical copy, as-is. The right to repair movement has the same cause ultimately. You purchase something, you own it, no matter what counter-legalese is tried.
The USA really needs to stop being a corporate-country. Weren't the republicans all about the people at one point in time? Now they are all about the billionaires and family dynasties pillaging what they can, with the forerunner the mad orange king pillaging the most. And starting wars he loses by default, after promising to not start wars.
inigyou 45 minutes ago [-]
I don't think they were ever all about the people.
nemomarx 37 minutes ago [-]
when do you recall them being about the people? it's gotta be before Bush so maybe I just didn't grow up with it
cubefox 3 hours ago [-]
Interesting also that even this article doesn't mention "DRM" anywhere despite the fact that this is exactly the worst case scenario DRM critics have always warned about.
(Personally I would consider DRM okay if Sony's behavior here was illegal without a full refund.)
jonhohle 1 hours ago [-]
This has happened since the beginning of DRM. I had a roommate who bought hundreds of dollars of music from the Walmart music store because WMAs were like 59¢ instead of 99¢ from iTunes. It seems like not even a year later they shutdown the store and the certificate expired and PlaysForSure stopped playing for sure. That was around 2003.
20 years later will anyone do anything about it? Of course not.
What is going to be the event that gets laws to change? Probably not a few movies viewable only from Sony devices.
jmclnx 3 hours ago [-]
And yet Sony wonders why people pirate their movies. In this case here the owners who had their movies stolen should be able to steal them back.
mrweasel 2 hours ago [-]
If you cared enough, I do wonder if you could win in court, if you pirated a movie that you purchased on the PS5, but Sony removed. It would cost you an ungodly amount of money to defend yourself against Sony, and I don't know the exact words of the "license", but it seems like a reasonable action to take.
Sohcahtoa82 52 minutes ago [-]
It'd be a case where the spirit of the law clashes with the letter of the law.
Sony's lawyers would argue about how things are, while your defense has to argue about how things should be.
Which way it goes likely depends on how sympathetic the judge is rather than actual arguments being made.
cube00 44 minutes ago [-]
I wonder if their use of a "buy" button would potentially weaken their case regardless of the language they put in the EULA.
joe_mamba 3 hours ago [-]
Sony's recent movies aren't even worth pirating
trencedamp 3 hours ago [-]
Madame Web anyone
cryo32 3 hours ago [-]
My daughter went to watch that and walked out. To compare, she managed to make it through Cats.
forgetfreeman 3 hours ago [-]
Jesus. That might be the most succinctly brutal movie review I've ever seen. quietly scratches Madam Web off the to-do list
3 hours ago [-]
s_dev 3 hours ago [-]
Into and Beyond the Spiderverse are flawless movies.
bluescrn 2 hours ago [-]
The first one was 8 years ago, in the pre-Covid world.
arcticbison 3 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
Rendered at 16:51:09 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
If not, should we change the law?
The point of a government in society is for people who give a shit to guide this kind of thing.
If you haven’t been paying attention lately, laws are only as good as they are enforced and it has become obvious that the ruling class is not going to enforce laws against themselves.
The solution here is not something most people are willing to inconvenience themselves over
The laws in this country are primarily written by and for large corporations. They’re not going to meaningfully practically restrain them just because something got passed.
Demos doesn't have capital. People never had power. Whenever they've thought they won ... they just damaged position of someone powerful for someone even more powerful without even knowing it.
Clearly this law needs to be worded harsher, so the button MUST say "rent" if you are renting.
Sadly the case was settled, see: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/litigation/apple-settles-alleg...
If buying isn't owning, then piracy isn't stealing.
The problem isn't it being illegal.
But they instead bank on most people not having the means (money/time) or will to sue them over this. Especially given that the actual "damages" you can effectively sue for often relatively small for most users (likely <15€ per movie, so for most account <100€ per person "per situation where you could sue").
And if there is an exception (someones losing hundreds of movies or class action law suite) settling is likely still cheaper for Sony.
This is the problem with many laws the cost of breaching them is often too small (but only IFF you are a huge company with their own lawyer department etc.).
If management would be personally liable with _mandatory prison sentences_ for the CEO/Company Owners if it seems the law was knowingly breached because penalties are cheaper then benefits (or repeated offenses etc.) things probably would look quite different.
Other approaches to counter this includes things like penalties of base+%of yearly revenue, %yearly Profite etc. The problem here is this approaches are often a mix of unfair (e.g. same revenue with large profit margin is penalized way less) and/or can be fudged/circumvented (e.g. if based on profit, but even if based on revenue it can be partially circumvented in some situations. So I think making executive personally liable might be the only way to fix this.
Inevitably people will ask what that means. That will lead to a FAQ on the company's site somewhere, and various videos on the social media explaining it periodically with lots of comments. That will be a good thing.
Corporate marketing teams will eventually settle on something better sounding but technically legal, something like "Premier Anytime Access" for specific movies (versus "Bronze 24-hr Access"), or similar.
It's the same as if someone sold you a toaster with a remote self-destruct feature, and then invoked the self-destruct. They owe you a new toaster.
- If the license terms include a section on termination, and termination is done in accordance with the license terms, it's fine legally.
- Licenses can be transferable but that doesn't make them non-terminable.
I could be wrong, though.
It's pretty crappy that we got to the point that overly simple actions (like clicking on buttons or breaking stickers on packages) can be considered accepting license terms. Is that really a "meeting of the minds"?
It's never been legal to copy a book, film, or music album and sell the copies, for example, because the licence doesn't allow it. Hence freeware, shareware, and copyleft licences.
It only mattered that if you sell it you lose it, i.e. you can't buy 1 sell (or gift) 10.
Similarly in analog times this where not unilaterally cancelled licenses. Which are effectively nothing more then time limited licenses where you just don't know how long. (1: un
In law areas outside of copyright this kind of license cancellation terms are often seen as predatory, fraudulent and abusive practices. And _sometimes outright illegal no matter how well you communicated what the license/contract does_ before it was acquired (in some countries).
(1: unilateral cancellable without a brach of license/contract from you side and some other special edge cases to be more precise)
Which is the crux of the problem, not that it isn't attached to physical media, but that it can be cancelled in a mostly despotic manner and you (often) can't make (relevant) backups or similar to protect the availability of the medium either.
The license isn't what takes away your permission to redistribute copies; copyright law does that by default. The license is only reminding you that it's not lifting that default, not granting you that permission.
Copying is neither here or there. There is an understanding that when you buy a book, you own the physical thing.
If I sell you a toaster and then remotely cause it to self-destruct, I owe you a new toaster.
Grandparent referenced "if buying isn't owning then copying isn't stealing". I would say that "if buying isn't owning, then stealing isn't stealing".
If a toaster is offered to sale to the public which the seller can remotely destroy at any time, and not pay anyone a cent, and the law upholds that, then it's morally fine to just walk out of their store with that toaster without paying.
Hence why you don't get tried for theft when you commit digital piracy. Which, as absurd as it might sound, sometimes (/in some cases) would be better to be tried for due to very unbalanced laws.
But also it should be pretty obvious that this isn't what people mean when they say "if buying isn't owning, then piracy isn't stealing" and a intentionally misinterpretation of statements based by nitpicking formulations is neither contributing anything meaningful nor is it appreciated (in most situations).
https://retailwire.com/t-mobile-att-verizon-fined-10-2m-for-...
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/07/lawsuit-t-mobile...
At the very least, if Sony yanks your purchase, they should merely refund it in full.
This is the obvious solution to most problems but of course they're the ones writing the laws so it'd never happen in a trillion years.
This is a one-time cost and you just don't know when they're going to snatch it back from you. They won't tell you. They won't even give you a notice period. They don't know themselves. They only find out when the licensor they're sublicensing from demands "too much" for ongoing licensing and they just give up and pretend they didn't sell you that and take your money.
The button would have to be "Licence, subject to unilateral revocation at any time."
If you wouldn't do that for Walmart, why would you do it for Sony?
I propose, let's see..
Definitely Isn’t Legal Doctrine, Obviously
or.. Based Only On Basic Speculation
perhaps Consult Official Counsel, Kindly
or more succinct, This Isn’t Trained Solicitor Advice
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48747389 - "Sony Deletes 551 Movies PlayStation Owners Paid For" (reclaimthenet.org)
636 points | 15 days ago | 304 comments
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48730904 - "Sony erases digital content from libraries" (arstechnica.com)
184 points | 16 days ago | 76 comments
Unless I missed something recently, it's not illegal. You've always had the right to make backups of content that you purchased legally. It's the distribution that has been illegal.
Is the age of the console finally coming to an end?
https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2026/06/switch-2s-first-ye...
I can't say I know anyone IRL who has any interest in leaving PlayStation. Nobody buys movies there and people who care about physical games are a minority...there are already Slim models without optical drives and GameStops are mostly Funko Pops because most people buy games online. It's too soon to have actual concrete data besides useless internet sentiment reporting though. And a lot of that is just vague anger about prices for all computing hardware being up...and everything else in the US.
We're also at the ending stages of the PS5 lifecycle, but before a PS6 announcement. (With an unprecedented price increase this late in the cycle.) So there's no buzz about what's next, a large base of people who already have the existing thing, and an expectation that it will cost more.
Meanwhile, the anticipated Grand Theft Auto 6 is on the way, and a PC release isn't on the table anytime soon.
We have this now, every PC has some kind of graphics hardware, and has for many years. Consoles have been riding on their momentum of their brands, but the technical justification for their product category hasn't existed for 15+ years now.
Some console gamers seem to think PC gaming requires hours of fiddling with settings and drivers. I think we've all had that experience on PC (cough Bethesda cough), but I doubt to the degree the console-side would have you believe. Most AAA games will self-optimize their settings to a playable state, and indie games don't tend to demand more than your standard gaming laptop can provide...but I'm sure we've all been burned some 10-odd years ago buying a Steam game that just wouldn't run on your iGPU...that experience sticks around in the brain a while
If something runs on a Steam Deck, you can be sure it will run on your >= Steam Deck-equivalent device.
I've never considered that my old 360 was probably sold at a loss, knowing I'd buy LIVE and all the games they take a cut/license fee off of, but that makes complete sense to me
Let me tell you, as someone that repairs a TON of XBox 360s, this comment is very, VERY wrong. The GPU isn't even the same revision between the same batch runs. Did you get Xenos? Zeus? Jupiter? That determined one set of things needed for install/refurbish. Is that a Valhalla motherboard in your hands? That just limited you to a very narrow and specific set of hardware you could utilize.
Oh and performance between all of those models varied WILDLY. Silicon lottery is a fucking JOKE on the XBox 360.
It used to be a selling point of console indeed, however nowadays console are separated by Pro/Non-pro, different revisions and you aren't really guaranteed on how well your game is going to run unless you watch a Youtube let's play of the game you want.
This has almost never been true. GPUs existed, and were being used, before the N64.
Your comment also begs the question that the console consumer has transitioned to a gaming pc. They haven't. Gaming PC sales (and hardware) are at all-time lows, except for GPUs, which should probably be renamed to Model Training Units.
I would posit that what we're seeing is a reflection of a content problem, not hardware. Video games have gone the way of Hollywood, with sequels and derivatives, and an uninterested consumer base. People would rather watch a YouTube video of someone playing a video game than play a video game.
Video cards existed, but 3D accelerators didn't really catch on until the 3dfx Voodoo, which came out about the same time as the N64. Even Quake II which came out a year later still offered software rendering.
> Your comment also begs the question that the console consumer has transitioned to a gaming pc. They haven't.
I'm only a single point of data, but I was a console gamer that transitioned to PC gaming, but that transition happened during the N64/PSX era. It was near the end of the PS2 cycle that I was full PC.
> Gaming PC sales (and hardware) are at all-time lows
Because prices are at all-time highs. I have a monster PC that I probably spent around $6,000 building, but with prices skyrocketing, it'd run me $10,000 to build it today. A few months ago, it would have been $11,000.
> Video games have gone the way of Hollywood, with sequels and derivatives, and an uninterested consumer base.
In the AAA world, this is true. So many gamers that only play Call of Duty, Fortnite, Minecraft, or a sports game. For CoD and the sports games, they reliably buy the latest release every year despite the lack of anything really being different.
But the Indie world is huge and full of innovation. Balatro, Stardew Valley, Disco Elysium, Slay the Spire, Cuphead, I could go on.
> People would rather watch a YouTube video of someone playing a video game than play a video game.
I don't think that's true at all. Maybe for high-level play, or if the streamer has highly entertaining commentary, but otherwise definitely not true.
N64 came out in the USA in September 1996.
3dfx Voodoo was released to consumers in October 1996.
But there might be a generational change coming. Basically the entire cohort of parents in my kids’ kindergarten is much more intentional about what kinds of games they’re playing and how they’re spending their “screen time.” I see a lot more people just giving their kids retro-consoles and emulation rather than setting them loose on the kiddie grooming and dopamine receptor-frying skinner-boxes.
I suppose it’s one of the benefits of having a generation of parents who grew up with formative memories of playing video games themselves combined with a growing awareness of UI dark patterns and their long term impacts on cognitive development and well-being.
Then there’s the convenience. I don’t want to play games where I work. I want to play on my TV. I have no interest in moving my workstation into my living room. Streaming with Moonlight works well enough, but there’s still lag. Even if I wanted to move my PC to the living room, the setup isn’t as nice. The Steam Machine has HDMI CEC and can power on with a controller — all the major consoles have had that for years.
Even if I accepted all that, no one else in my household could play anything while I’m working on my computer.
Things are a little weird now. If I’m going to have to go all digital, Steam Family is by far the best option of those with DRM. But, due to the astronomical cost of components, consoles are still pretty attractive.
Thanks to recent moves by Sony, this is no longer the case!
Gaming PCs also require specialized knowledge, more maintenance, etc etc. Consoles are pick up and go. I very much doubt they're dead yet.
Now we get incremental improvements, cross-generation games, and backwards compatibility. And AAA game development isn't exactly doing well these days.
A console is a far easier thing to defend against cheaters than a PC - absent true hardware vulnerabilities (which become more and more expensive, now that stuff like voltage glitching, clock cutting and whatnot is all known and accounted for), you are basically limited to botted input and AI-assistance based on what can be seen on the screen.
The selling point of consoles is that they’re a software platform, with development incentives, standardized hardware, standardized UI conventions, and a centralized storefront to be able to conveniently and natively play stuff on your TV without fussing about.
Valve has barely started to muscle in on the platform benefits of gaming on a PlayStation or XBox, but the more they start to do so the more they end up making design trade-offs that start to look like another console.
Source? Is that reddit?
It simply doesn't make sense.
PC is even more digital-only than Playstation. No one buys physical games on PC. The only difference is that Valve has been a very good steward over Steam. Theoretically, PC can get as enshittified as PS.
I guess there are other DRM-based purchasing platforms, and there's also DRM free ones like GOG so PC gamers have choice, but those feel niche mostly.
Jokes aside I do agree that streaming doesn’t work reliably for all game genres and client geographies, mostly due to latency
I say this as a primarily pc gamer. It’s not for most people.
Retro hardware prices have been going up fairly significantly though, especially for Amiga stuff.
Sure, it won’t beat a tricked out gaming PC with some $4000 GPU in it, but it will probably be competitive with console gaming. Granted, the PS5 is 5-6 years old by now, but my phone has more power in every measure.
My “dream” everyday device is still a phone that docks with a display, keyboard and mouse, and magically transforms into a desktop OS. On the to mobile apps would allow access to the same data, but touch optimized instead.
It’s similar to comparing Netflix to the Criterion Streaming platform. Technically you’re doing the same thing, sitting on the couch watching a big screen, but the experience being pitched is a totally different one and the target customer doesn’t really overlap.
If you are a games studio and have resources for three projects this year, do your investors want to see a phone, PC, or console game?
There was a time when regular families had desktop computers at home. The marketing was intense, the machines were expensive, and the sales numbers were real. The PC was the gateway to all of the spoils of the internet and things were booming.
Now families tend to have a collection expensive personal pocket supercomputers, instead. It's hard to justify the cost of a properly-stodgy computer when everything is online and the machines that everyone already has in their pockets are Good Enough to get things done (including entertainment).
But I can accept that I'm not everyone.
I suspect that we'll have whole generations of people who manage to grow up and grow old and without ever having, or even seeking, the opportunity to spend quality time gaming on PCs.
I think that's alright. Things are allowed to change.
You used to be able to dial TIM on a landline phone to check the time (for free?). Then you (if you were a computer nerd) checked it on your computer, then on your phone. Because that's what was available. There was no connection between knowing the time and landline phones - people just had landline phones so it was a convenient way to deliver the service. That's how it is with mobile games now.
Remember Java and Flash applets? You could make anything you wanted as a native application, but RuneScape took off because you didn't have to install it.
I haven't had enough motivation to sit on my couch and game after a long day ..
But the same game, in bed, on my deck was so much nicer..
All I can now say is having a dedicated device, that's not your laptop/computer to play games is definitely a market - be it Steam machine (/custom builds), hand held gaming, or just regular consoles..
The problem is that these are not legally mandated, so they can shut down (as UltraViolet did). If the ability to move the licence to another platform is mandated by law as a condition of continued copyright protection, this problem would largely disappear.
In practical terms, the logistics of many-years-later refunds would be unwieldy at best. Do the purchase records still exist? What if I no longer have that credit card or email address? How can you prove you're the heir of the deceased? What if I now live in a country where the "deletion" status is different? And how could you stop all the scammers who smelled free money?
Alternative: The gov't randomly picks 24 citizens from a pool of applicants who reasonably prove that they were harmed by the deletion. Those 24 are given legal authority to fiat-revoke all copyright protection on a "reasonable and proportional" number of the deleting corporation's currently copyrighted works. Or upstream of them, as "appropriate".
Similarly, we should put in a law to force consumers who post bad reviews to prove they actually transacted with the business. If they can't, they have to go to every person who saw the review and personally retract it.
Can't figure out who saw it? Tough. It's up to you to figure out, or else it's illegal and they get 5000 years in prison for every view it got.
To put it in perspective, I bought Get Him to the Greek on Prime video shortly after it came out.
A month later, the "exclusive broadcast rights" changed, and I was no longer able to access it.
Sony Deletes 551 Movies PlayStation Owners Paid For (294 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48747389
Sony erases digital content from libraries (74 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48730904
They don't even offer refunds.
As an indication of where things are going on this front, from the same publisher: Sony announced that games are not going to get distributed as physical copies anymore. So no new video games to be borrowed from public libraries, and even if you can borrow older games the new Playstations probably won't even have a disk tray to read them.
Whatever your stance on video games being something that is worth having in a library is, if they could get away with it that's probably their ideal end game for movies as well.
Guess it will be an upswing of BlueRay movies. Already happening with LPs and CDs
Discs that worked with a player will continue to work, as long as the physical mechanisms are still good.
Technically, maybe, since the player authenticates with the drive, if you updated the firmware on the drive you could lockout the player. I could see windows update potentially helpfully pushing a bd-rom drive firmware update, but it's not happening on a standalone player.
It's not ideal that your existing player might not read new discs, but hopefully you use your discs soon after purchase and you could return them if you can't get a firmware update with a new key. (Of course, I'm guilty of buying discs to watch eventually; will be annoying if my keys were revoked)
So far.
I'm currently listening to a record which was pressed before I was born, and that will outlast me. My CDs were ripped around 2000 to a drive and i've streamed then since. I've still got the CDs though, and the last time I played one it worked fine on my 1989 vintage transport.
I think i'm good.
If they do want to posit it as this, I'd personally be fine if they said "a CD will work for 100k plays before corrupting" so you'll have 100,000 credits to stream The Wizard of Oz before you need to purchase it again.
But they need to say that upfront.
Plastic discs are the optimum data distribution format. They degrade in the same time frame as a paper book, essentially lifetime, you retain legal rights like the first sale doctrine, you can easily format shift for safety and storage, and nobody can take any of that from you ever, and you can use that data however you like, as long as you aren't trying to sell bootlegs.
Books and plastic discs are infinitely better than the digital realm. The consumer rights are so much stronger and better.
The USA really needs to stop being a corporate-country. Weren't the republicans all about the people at one point in time? Now they are all about the billionaires and family dynasties pillaging what they can, with the forerunner the mad orange king pillaging the most. And starting wars he loses by default, after promising to not start wars.
(Personally I would consider DRM okay if Sony's behavior here was illegal without a full refund.)
20 years later will anyone do anything about it? Of course not.
What is going to be the event that gets laws to change? Probably not a few movies viewable only from Sony devices.
Sony's lawyers would argue about how things are, while your defense has to argue about how things should be.
Which way it goes likely depends on how sympathetic the judge is rather than actual arguments being made.