Gamer/Consumer Rights curiosities...

[arus2001]

So, this is something I've been mulling over more recently, but without a legal background or more of the right know how on what to search for, I'm basically concerned about things like where our ownership of video games lies these days when factoring things like mandatory online connectivity, what to do at the conclusion of product support or transition to abandonware, prevalence of loot boxes/gacha beyond underage gambling concerns, mod support, the degradation of older physical media, preservation of games as an art form, or handling of post-launch revenue and reinvestment into the host product.

Something like the EFA (Electronic Frontier Alliance) sounds like it would be an appropriate group to correlate such issues with, as while they have successful cases as pertains to things like free speech and the like when it comes to various digital ends, the topic of video games still seems like a largely un-treaded water. Ultimately, it just seems like we have to accept whatever publishers push at us, with at best, flexing the right to buy or not.

Stuff like ToS/EULA can pretty much have anything written into them that are either never seriously challenged or just routinely overlooked because people just want to play whatever. Obviously, some of this stuff should be a given like don't cheat/hack in the official shared environment, no harassment, slurs, etc., but should we technically be okay with language that translates more to us just leasing access or other "as a service" pitfalls? We'd probably hear similar song and dance as the music industry and the like when it comes to certain measures being more about anti-piracy. The aforementioned EFA was involved in the case with Sony and putting DRM/spyware in CDs back in the day, too.

But really, part of this is also me wanting to formulate a more cohesive and refined message about all this stuff. I have no delusion that some 60+ year old politician doesn't really gives a shit about someone not being able to play a shutdown MMO anymore that they'd supported for years, but some way to codify and unite gamers who have experienced similar is something I feel like we're increasingly needing as cloud tech is further pushed, while various companies continue to push record profits while treating both their workers and consumers like shit. From there, it's hopefully something those of younger blood with latch onto. I know we have a few people in the gaming industry lurking around here, and there's also been some controversy pertaining to unionizing or studios like Telltale collapsing due to overreach and other poor practices. I don't want to believe that we're completely fucked and there isn't another great gaming crash in the near future, but this feeling of companies growing increasingly out of touch is irksome, while pimping the support of indy studios does nothing to really guarantee quality/polished games the big boys can manage or that they don't succumb to their own internal issues or drama.

[Salodin]

I'm ambivalent to this. I have my old generation games still, sitting in a box in my closet and under the bed collecting dust and taking up room. I cant bring myself to throw them out, because of nostalgia and love for gaming back in the day, but I wholeheartedly do not want to repeat this again in 20 years when my current gen boxes are sitting in my closet collecting dust as well. This is wasteful and useless, and the only thing that's gonna happen is my grandkids are gonna pilfer the rare games like xenogears and literally throw out the shit they dont appreciate like Parasite Eve and Playstation Demo Disk. There is a better way, and the service model of holding my game on the cloud seems to be that.

After having and loving my 360, I skipped the One until this past Christmas. After 6ish years, I simply moved my gamertag over and ALL my digital purchases were available to play, even those 360 arcade games. I loved it, and I didn't have to drag out old CDs or cartridges to do it. With rumors circulating that the next gen systems will allow you to play all previous generation games, what use is there in owning the physical media when its magnitudes easier to digitally pull the game versus running out to buy a slow CD that you're just going to install on your hard drive anyways but still need to insert the physical CD because that's what your license says you do.

I get the concern, but the advantages to where this tech is going are too good for me to pass up. Physical games dont even come with instruction booklets anymore, why am I driving to a brick and mortar store or waiting for my Amazon package to be delayed when I can hit install from my dashboard and be ready to play the moment it goes live.

I feel like the game industry has worse issues than content ownership, the biggest being devs need to form a union cause work conditions are horrid no matter where you work.

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[arus2001]

Well, here's a question: Do you expect Steam to exist in 20 years? 40? What happens to the libraries everyone has invested in when you have to contend with a mix of device incompatibility (Think DOS/Win95 games not working on later Windows versions) without companies like GGG patching them up or getting something like an official remaster. I don't need the physical game boxes/discs, personally, but what myself and I know others need is the guarantee that if we want to play something, we still can and not at partial functionality without resorting to piracy and/or shoddy emulation.

But let's say Sony figures out backwards compatibility, but it has to be streamed/digital. All my PS1/2 discs may as well be bricks when/if their corresponding units die. I doubt they'd honor scans or something of the boxes in place of registration codes, either, which means I'd technically have to re-buy anything I'd be interested in (and probably at a grossly inflated price if not part of a bulk sub). I know I also bought some games on the Wii store back in the day, but that no longer exists. If, for whatever reason, I lose them/they get deleted, I don't believe I'd be able to recover them, either.

Now, there was a time in the past where some folks were trying to put together a library of past games precisely for preservation purposes, but our console overlords would not have that, in part, because it infringed upon their ability to rebrand and resell all these old things like with the (S)NES Classic and the like. You also mentioned work conditions in the industry, which is definitely valid, but let's also not pretend the people that worked on Metroid in the 80s would be seeing residuals of its sale today. There has to be a point where we can say, "Hey, you guys milked the cow enough." and just let things wander the ether similarly to how we could just go to a library and borrow a book for free. You also have some iterative titles where every year or two a new version is pushed and multiplayer functionality is cut because they expect players to jump to the new model, typically because they insist on being an intermediary instead of allowing direct P2P connections like some of us older gamers may remember from back in the day.

But there's also the ghost of MMOs and mobile games to speak of. Should their code be released after a period of closure? Should it be mandated that if they can't keep things running, they find someone who would even if it's pure maintenance mode from then on? I'm sure people liked Wildstar, Age of Conan, City of Heroes, and other titles that have come and gone, but why do they need to stay dead? I know I'm not on good terms with SE's bare ass fucking minimum attention to XI but certainly be sure to charge 2005 price scheme they've got going, but I also know I'll be sad when the decade of effort I put into my character is no longer accessible while the private scene is stuck with dipshits that want to insist on classic modes or not understanding why some changes were made to the game over time.

There's gotta be a point where we can be assured they're our games, too, and not just memories.

[Salodin]

On the MMOs side, I feel like that's a service and not some stand alone game so I give them leeway that I dont give pretty much every other non online 24/7 game.

I'll write more later but I'm really stuck on the "ownership" part of it. I have a shitton of ps1 and ps2 games that are literally useless if my slim ps2 kicks the dust, which it eventually will if not in my lifetime then my kids. I dont see that problem as being fundamentally any different then Steam one day going out of business and the confusion about all the licenses in my library.

I have a VHS tape somewhere, but no VCR, which is basically the same situation. I'm not gonna complain that I have to rebuy Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 again, I'm just gonna do it cause the new version is better and more convenient.

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[BerenTebogo]

On the MMOs side, I feel like that's a service and not some stand alone game so I give them leeway that I dont give pretty much every other non online 24/7 game.

I'll write more later but I'm really stuck on the "ownership" part of it. I have a shitton of ps1 and ps2 games that are literally useless if my slim ps2 kicks the dust, which it eventually will if not in my lifetime then my kids. I dont see that problem as being fundamentally any different then Steam one day going out of business and the confusion about all the licenses in my library.

I have a VHS tape somewhere, but no VCR, which is basically the same situation. I'm not gonna complain that I have to rebuy Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 again, I'm just gonna do it cause the new version is better and more convenient.

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This sorta, by accident, introduces the point that it is also written into the ToS that you cannot "modify" your Playstation in any way. Something to that effect. Hardly enforceable, but if I remember discussions from years ago, the implications were that you didn't have the "right" to open up your PS2/3/4 and service it yourself.

Does anyone remember this? It goes to your point of "if my ps2 slim kicks the dust" in that, sure, things break. The average person won't be able to do shitall about it, but at the end of the day the older playstations are just optical drives. As long as the software back-end isn't corrupted, it should be eternally serviceable by your local underpaid electrical engineering undergrad.

[Salodin]

I don't know nearly enough about console repairs to have a great opinion on it. Laws are only as good as their enforcement, and as long as the company isn't opening consoles to add devices that enable things like piracy, I cant recall a situation where the big 3 cracked down on them. On top of that, a lot of the tech inside the box is proprietary outside of optical drives and hard drives, or games are designed with workarounds specific to the specifications to the system. IF, and that's a big if, people had the spare parts that are not OEM to repair a system, there's no guarantee it will work correctly just like how there's no guarantee when emulating ps1/ps2 games on PC that it will run 100% faithful and correct.

What is the solution to that? Require all devices sold to have their OEM parts available for purchase so people can repair them as components bite the dust? Seems kinda ridiculous if you ask me. Sometimes tech breaks and if the parts arent readily available, or first party repairs arent offered, then you just go buy the upgraded device or promise yourself never to support that company again.

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[Salodin]

When new form factors come out, like say moving from VGA to HDMI, do people who only have VGA monitors get to complain when they buy a new PC and the only outputs for video are DVI or HDMI? I dont think so. You tell them "oh that sucks", followed by "welp guess it's time for you to join us in the 21st century". Or you buy an adapter (emulator), and hope for the best. Which is what I'll be doing when I'm showing my grandkids parasite eve after my 2nd kid spilled milk all over my retro ps2.

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[BerenTebogo]

I don't know nearly enough about console repairs to have a great opinion on it. Laws are only as good as their enforcement, and as long as the company isn't opening consoles to add devices that enable things like piracy, I cant recall a situation where the big 3 cracked down on them. On top of that, a lot of the tech inside the box is proprietary outside of optical drives and hard drives, or games are designed with workarounds specific to the specifications to the system. IF, and that's a big if, people had the spare parts that are not OEM to repair a system, there's no guarantee it will work correctly just like how there's no guarantee when emulating ps1/ps2 games on PC that it will run 100% faithful and correct.

What is the solution to that? Require all devices sold to have their OEM parts available for purchase so people can repair them as components bite the dust? Seems kinda ridiculous if you ask me. Sometimes tech breaks and if the parts arent readily available, or first party repairs arent offered, then you just go buy the upgraded device or promise yourself never to support that company again.

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I hard disagree with this. I paid for the product, I should own it. I should be able to take it apart, repair it, light it on fire, throw it off a building, turn it into a fucking fleshlight if I so choose.

What I shouldn't be able to do is then profit off of any modifications I make, which is fair and that is clear. But let's be clear here - this is my fucking Playstation (or should be). Can you imagine if it was illegal to open the hood of your car when it broke down? Voiding the warranty would be an extreme level of shit that is still understandable, but illegal? There would be riots.

[Salodin]

Is it actually illegal though to open your console and mod it? I thought this was settled in court already and it was decided that it wasn't illegal, but that might have been another country. Modding it for piracy or profit obviously is illegal, but I'm not sure the other uses are.

And does that even matter? You still need parts to replace inside, and unless you're making your own boards how are you gonna do that? I dont know the history of mod chips, are they circumventing something to get piracy to work, or are they actual new chips/boards that they engineered to work with the system to do what it wants. My gut tells me it's the former.

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[BerenTebogo]

Is it actually illegal though to open your console and mod it? I thought this was settled in court already and it was decided that it wasn't illegal, but that might have been another country. Modding it for piracy or profit obviously is illegal, but I'm not sure the other uses are.

And does that even matter? You still need parts to replace inside, and unless you're making your own boards how are you gonna do that? I dont know the history of mod chips, are they circumventing something to get piracy to work, or are they actual new chips/boards that they engineered to work with the system to do what it wants. My gut tells me it's the former.

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There's plenty of levels of repair before making your own chips. Like, optical drives are pretty standard as long as the data interpreter isn't fucked. A fan could be broken and need to be replaced. A heat sink on the board. Any number of things before you get to "modding".

I also don't quite recall which is why I sorta phrased it as a "I don't remember exactly, but..." with regard to whether or not it was resolved in the states.

https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-t...air-laws-2018/ it looks like it was resolved favorably, which is good. Still wild as fuck that it was ever in contention.

[Salodin]

See, I dont believe for a second any of the big 3 are going to crack down on a company that says "well replace your broken ps3 disk tray" considering Sony doesnt repair then anymore.

I feel like this all lives in a gray area of technicality where technically the big 3 have a lot of power but they never exercise it cause they dont want to offer those services, or the costs are too big for such a small gain.

If red rings were still a thing, would Microsoft sue a company that said "well repair your heat sink for chump change before it red rings"? I dont believe they would.

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[arus2001]

My general understanding was that opening your console pretty much invalidated their warranty, so if you did get a RRoD and tried to send it in, MS would just send it back with the accusation you tried to illegally modify your console because the sticker seal would've been broken. We should probably assert this is a different sort of legality than say, like, not driving the speed limit, in part because if you bought the console used or something, you really wouldn't have a fucking clue if someone messed with it or not prior. Of course, consoles have been increasingly designed to need special tools just to safely open them, and while these do wind up on the market eventually, your average joe probably isn't going to want to track one down or even feel confident enough to try a fix on their own, especially if you start getting into soldering or other complicated tech fixes. Something like this is actually a topic I think recently got ruled in the consumer's favor, but the end result likely just turned into official repairs costing more if signs of tampering were found so I wouldn't call it the best win. Otherwise, yes, there are rulings out there that when we buy something, we can do whatever the fuck we want with it (Quanta vs. LG Electronics, as an example I found). It's just something that hasn't seemingly spread to digital media because the waters between physical and intellectual property are still murky.

The mention of cars and parts going proprietary is also something some states have been trying to fight because it basically screws your random repair shop/mechanic that isn't part of the provider umbrella. I can imagine this is also something that goes further into the insidious like the actual supported mechanics having to pay monthly for corresponding software or whatever just to remain valid in the system. Understandably, wanting valid firmware and the like in vehicles today is important for safety with how much more things are shifting computerized, but the prospect that's locked behind cronyism or a paywall is something we should probably be groaning at. Tangentially, it tends to be one of the reasons why I'm all "FUCK APPLE!" when it comes to their products.

[Kalmado]

I'm at work (and also eating lunch) so I do not have the resources to post but basically that voiding the warranty crap cannot be enforced. There are similar concerns specifically about video cards and the little void warranty stickers on the screws. There is a law about it somewhere out there that backs warranty cannot be void just because you took it apart. Also, if a company denied warranty because of that? OK no problem small claims court we go. Watch how fast you get a check.

[BerenTebogo]

Well that makes me feel better.

[TummieGaruda]

This question kind of reminds me of the OtherOS fiasco from the early PS3 days when Sony removed the ability to install Linux.

[Salodin]

This question kind of reminds me of the OtherOS fiasco from the early PS3 days when Sony removed the ability to install Linux.

That should have been illegal, or a refund should have been made available.

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[Jefe]

SONY was sued and lost. I got an email a few months ago asking me for my model # for my claim. I burned that shit like 10 years ago, so didn't get a piece of the pie lol. Fuckers. ;O

[BerenTebogo]

I still have mine but looks like I missed the ONE MONTH ( ? ? ? ? ) window to file my claim.

[Salodin]

I still have mine but looks like I missed the ONE MONTH ( ? ? ? ? ) window to file my claim.

This should also be illegal

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[arus2001]

Had this cross my path earlier. It's a long watch, but I'd say covers a lot of my concerns on the topic.