That’s why I try to do DRM-free as much as possible!
In this case the problem is not even DRM, it’s that the game was entirely streamed from a cloud service. People buying that technically never had the game on their device and were always dependent on a server that would be shut down eventually.
This is the future big tech companies want. Not owning anything to the point the game doesn’t even exist on your device. I say fuck them.
the game was entirely streamed from a cloud service
That’s a DRM, you do not own the copy of your game, you rent it and don’t even run it on your hardware. That sound pretty Digital Restrictions Management to me.
DRM is not about a file or a security, it’s about control and restrictions which big corpo calls: rights.
I wonder how long before we see laws preventing this practice of disabling games after sale. At least I would expect the EU to stop this.
I don’t even know how you’d legislate on this one.
The Switch is a weak console. The only way it was ever going to run games like this was via a cloud stream system. There was no possible solution for ensuring Switch owners could permanently play this game to the end of time.
I’d be curious if any Switch gamers were at all grateful for getting the chance to play it, or if the game was mischaracterized to them in this case, and they’re upset to lose it. Either way, I don’t for this game I don’t see a great solution, laws or not.
I’ll still support SKG in general. I wonder if it means a future game like this would need to be frontally advertised as “5 year access to this game via streaming”.
The Stop Killing Games movement has something cooking in parliament right now, so here’s hoping.
Considering that even the EU squashed the 'Stop Killing Games" petition and declined to address any new laws, it might be a while for any country to do so.
The industry is too moneyed, my plan is to buy no big name titles until indies are leading the pack and there’s no money for lobbying. Then every government will be happy to pass customer protection stuff.
