I guess I personally don’t really care about the legal aspect, I’ll make my own moral assessments on what I find reasonable to pirate etc. regardless of legality. Law only occasionally overlaps with ethics.
But on a philosophical level, a rethorical question I ask myself is; what does it really mean to “own” anything digital? I have to ponder on that for a while.
Oh that’s easy. For me at least. In my analysis, the law is wrong.
Where are the assets stored. On local storage? Then I own a copy of the assets.
Where is the game logic executed? Locally? Then I own a copy of that game logic. A server? Then I own non of that logic. A hybrid of the two? Then I own a copy of what my hardware processes.
Where is the game save data stored? Locally? Again, that a copy I own. On a server? I’m licensing it.
Here’s a good analogy: Monster Hunter: Processing, assets, and saves are all on individual machines. I can be cut off from the internet, and still play. I own a copy.
Diablo IV: the assets are local, processing my inputs is local, but my saves and the game logic are all processed on a server. I own a copy of the assets and input logic. Blizzard owns the rest as they process the rest.
If they want to do the whole “resources=expense” then I get to consider MY resources as expense too.
Before the internet, the concept of game ownership was much easier. Whatever the seller chose to call it, as long as I had complete control over when and where I could play the game, I owned it. I would consider any game where the ability to play it cannot be willfully taken from me by digital means to be owned by me. Nowadays, that mostly applies to cracked games or systems only. No game that requires an online connection to play would apply.
You were still buying a license to play the games.
But without a way to enforce it, it was (and still is) functionally identical to owning them outright. What it’s legally called is irrelevant.
I guess I personally don’t really care about the legal aspect, I’ll make my own moral assessments on what I find reasonable to pirate etc. regardless of legality. Law only occasionally overlaps with ethics.
But on a philosophical level, a rethorical question I ask myself is; what does it really mean to “own” anything digital? I have to ponder on that for a while.
Oh that’s easy. For me at least. In my analysis, the law is wrong.
Where are the assets stored. On local storage? Then I own a copy of the assets.
Where is the game logic executed? Locally? Then I own a copy of that game logic. A server? Then I own non of that logic. A hybrid of the two? Then I own a copy of what my hardware processes.
Where is the game save data stored? Locally? Again, that a copy I own. On a server? I’m licensing it.
Here’s a good analogy: Monster Hunter: Processing, assets, and saves are all on individual machines. I can be cut off from the internet, and still play. I own a copy.
Diablo IV: the assets are local, processing my inputs is local, but my saves and the game logic are all processed on a server. I own a copy of the assets and input logic. Blizzard owns the rest as they process the rest.
If they want to do the whole “resources=expense” then I get to consider MY resources as expense too.
Before the internet, the concept of game ownership was much easier. Whatever the seller chose to call it, as long as I had complete control over when and where I could play the game, I owned it. I would consider any game where the ability to play it cannot be willfully taken from me by digital means to be owned by me. Nowadays, that mostly applies to cracked games or systems only. No game that requires an online connection to play would apply.
But you could trade them with your friends, so single license meant nothing. You owned the game.