I don’t understand why you don’t blame Apple first of all for their methods of locking up open standards and/or modifying them just enough that non-apple products won’t work.
I don’t support Chinese companies for doing shitty products, but fuck Apple for everything they do to lock you in their “ecosystem.”
Yeah, I feel like oop reached the wrong conclusion after this. Apple treats its consumers as if they were mindless children and they (for some reason) love it. Just look at the whole “green texts” issue, for example.
Some manufacturers found a smart workaround but the apple brainrot is stronger, I guess.
I wouldn’t call this a “smart workaround”. I mean, I can hardly blame the opportunistic fucks for doing it this way, and certainly the original sin in Apple’s licensing/certification bullshit, but it’s just an amazingly stupid way of doing this all around, brought about by both Apple’s and the earbud manufacturers’ greed.
Wouldn’t Steam also need to follow a Court Order? Like, wouldn’t they be legally forced to? Because if they didn’t adhere to it they would be found in Contempt of Court, which is a pretty big deal legally speaking.
IANAL, but… I’m guessing GOG is of the opinion that they’re selling you a license that you own, and can thus bequeath to your heirs, where Steam is of the opinion they’re selling you a nontransferable license, so a will bequeathing it to someone would be seeking to enforce something you lack permission to do.
Aren’t non-transferable licenses basically illegal or void in the US because they violate the First-Sale-Doctrine though? Or perhaps it does not apply to digital products and that is how Valve applies it to Steam accounts?
As far as I am aware, most of the game and sofrware companies get around it by stating you're no longer buying a thing, but buying a non-transferrable licence to use the thing but you never actually own anything.
Microsoft, yes but they use the wording to buy windows license for example. Game companies still use wording “buy” game. Unless they change the purchase wording, I, as a consumer, am assuming I am buying a copy of the game I can play indefinitely while I own the game.
Yes, I understand that point. However, the point I am making is (going to make as black and white as possible, oversimplifying it on purpose):
If you’re selling a digital product (a non physical item), and use any of the following terms:
buy (ex. Buy now, buy today, etc)
purchase (ex. purchase now, purchase today, purchase to play, etc)
Own (ex. Own today, own and play today, etc)
Copy (ex. Get your copy today, your copy is waiting, we have your copy waiting, etc)
Then, I, as consumer of physical goods, being used to these types of wording meaning ownership of a copy without the ability of the manufacturer to come to my house and take the product away when they feel like or disable/remove songs, parts of movies or whatever by coming to my house and scratching off that part of the Blu-ray or DVD or whatever, should not be tricked into this by having to then read a 1000 word essay of legal speak saying you do not own what you are buying but are infact:
Renting
Licensing
Borrowing
Leasing
Said product, then that should violate some law about false advertising.
However, no one has taken the companies that started doing that to task, and now even companies like John Deer have been pulling that shit.
Hell, Monsanto actually took farmers to court on that principle for growing crops that had been naturally cross pollinated with "their" GMO crops using that principle.
I am not disagreeing with you. I am stating what we have allowed the rich fucks to get away with.
Licences are different than physical goods.
With a physical good you’re transferring ownership of that “thing”, and the new owner can do as they like, except for the exceptions made for copyright.
With a licensed thing, it’s closer to a rental. Just because you rented the tool doesn’t mean you can sell it, and it doesn’t mean that the rental company is obligated to let your next of kin keep using it.
This goes double for things like digital media, because the rental company is also the one who has actual possession of the thing. They’re not taking anything, they’re just not giving someone they never did business with access to it.
With a physical good you’re transferring ownership of that “thing”,
A use-right is also a thing that can be sold and for which stuff like the first sale doctrine applies. Possession and property of the use right is all yours, even if it does not include the right to make additional copies, that is, to sublicense.
At least that’s how it works over here, always has. You can get perfectly valid Windows Pro keys here on the cheap, there’s a small cottage industry buying up volume licenses at bankruptcy proceedings and the like and unbundling them. If Microsoft can’t stop that then Valve won’t, either.
I’m sure someone will challenge it in the EU then at some point.
In the US not all licenses are transferable, and that includes things like “accounts”.
Valve and gog have the same policy. I’m fairly confident that both of them didn’t decide to violate the law in the same way that’s also consistent with how other digital licensing arrangements work without consulting with some lawyers on their user agreements.
In the US not all licenses are transferable, and that includes things like “accounts”.
That’s maybe a service that you can’t transfer but it’s still holding property of the account holder. More like escrow.
As to lawyers, well, they aren’t hiring lawyers to follow the intent of the law but to write terms that they think they might get away with, at least for a while, and if not, not be nailed for fraud or such. Corporate lawyers are just as slimy in the EU as they are elsewhere.
I don’t know what to tell you beyond “in the US, not all licenses are transferable”. Different countries have different laws.
It’s a pretty well trod area of law, so it’s not really contentious that it’s a legal license term in the US. www.shadesofgraylaw.com/…/cant-transfer-this/ is an example. It’s less tested for consumers.
The lawyers are definitely there to protect the company. No lawyer is ever there to follow the intent of the law, because it’s the letter that matters in almost every circumstance.
Knowingly adding an illegal term to the terms of the agreement is a great way to not only fail to protect the company, because the entire thing might get tossed out, but to risk professional consequences.
Even the Microsoft terms of service say “non-transferable unless you’re in Germany or other EU jurisdiction where such clauses are unenforceable”.
So I’ve spent a few minutes trying to see what the internet thinks, and it looks like there’s not a clear consensus that the First-Sale-Doctrine applies to non-physical goods similarly to physical ones, and does seem to be a consensus that digital goods make it a lot messier. Seems like the law hasn’t caught up to technology, still.
And in absence of clear law, it makes sense that companies are making their own opinions, and unfortunate that some are being greedier than they could be.
More like the technology hasn’t caught up to the law. There certainly isn’t a consensus that the First Sale Doctrine doesn’t apply to digital goods, and should never be because that’s absolutely wrong.
I think is a bit strange that Steam is so adamant on that. Sure in total every game of an inherited account might be a lot, but most are old games they sell for 5 bucks or less. How many of these old games would’ve been bought again from the new owner? I have little time for old games or old media, so it would be like getting grandpa Joes old book collection. It’s not worthless but the emotional value is probably higher than the real use. Steam gets 30% of every game sold, seams enough to cover account forwarding.
At this point I believe Steam is just trying to avoid a rabbit hole. Given how massive and easily abused Steam platform is… it does not align with their interest.
They’ll be forced to accept it, at least in the EU, they will also need to enable you to resell your games. EU law on this is clear, rulings in other cases are clear, all we’re waiting for is for Valve to stop appealing or lose before the ECJ, whatever is first.
The tl;dr is if they want to argue that they’re simply renting out licenses then they shouldn’t be taking one-time but regular payments, or only give out time-limited licenses for one-time payments, or some such. They should also avoid terms such as “buy” and “summer sale” like the plague.
They probably don’t care, but are dealing with a lot of publishers they want to keep happy. If they’re forced to transfer the titles by a court, they can wipe their hands of any of their publishers being angry at them.
I think the phrasing is wrong. GoG wants a public document detailing the legal estate transfer. Can’t just email them a death certificate and claim your a beloved grandson.
People have died because of wills. Shit gets messy.
I think they may have meant a probate court. Steam can ignore or argue against a probate court on several grounds and might have to be taken to a judicial court, GOG may be claiming they would accept the judgement of a probate court. Definitely needs to be expanded upon and clarified.
If the law says you can transfer licenses posthumously to someone, businesses are compelled to do so. No private agreement is above the law.
If the business granting the license doesn’t consent and they pull it they are then able to be sued for violating a law allowing posthumous transfer of license.
Stupidity at its finest. The whole point of cheap 3rd party apple accessories is to use workarounds to get past apple DRMs and use them without paying the apple tax.
Blame apple foremost for creating such a market in the 1st place. You don’t need such workarounds in other phones because they just work.
I lost my earbuds in a remote town in Chile, so tried buying a new pair at the airport before flying out.
…
True Apple lightning devices are more expensive to make.
…
I wish @Apple would devote an employee or two to cracking down on such a technological, psychological abomination as this.
He wants to take away a budget option from developing countries where people can’t afford the expensive version of the proprietary technology, and he wants Apple to be the one to do it?
I suspect the ranting author failed to appreciate that Bluetooth is probably cheaper to implement for the audio because regular headphones require three wires while power supply only requires two. Ingenious really.
EDIT: Proper wired headphones would also require a soundcard in the dongle.
There is a soundcard in the bluetooth headphones and wires are dirt cheap, it’s not about that. Proper lightning headphones require getting your product certified by apple ($$$) and a special apple chip added in ($$$) because iPhones refuse to connect to devices that aren’t.
But they will connect to all bluetooth devices.
Nah, it should be like the audio jack, you plug in the headphomes with no proprietary bullshit…Apple is locking poor people out of this easy method by being dicks about lightning connec tors. Im glad EU forces them to USB-c but Apple will probably lock devices out on this also
Yet… have you tried a non apple USB headset to see if it works? Just becauae you have USB doesn’t neccessaeily mean kernel allows all devices. But even if it works to placate EU now have you noticed that all giant companies start out with something that is OK, then later alter the deal, once you are trapped.
Also I mention apple locks poor people out of headphones and you reply IPhone 15 is out. You realize many people can not afford a brand new iphone just because it came out?
Every iPhone has been expensive on release. As time goes on more and more people get newer and newer phones. And what was new and expensive becomes cheap and available.
Not so much in places like Brazil, Africa, India etc. you can get a cheap Android phone for $25 but iPhone is still a premium luxury. The new phone every two years is a privalege thing.
Does he want to take a budget option away? At one point he says “And they still charge $12” to me that says that’s close to what proper wired earbuds should cost. People are getting screwed buying something that should have higher sound quality and getting the cheapest Bluetooth quality instead.
Not only an airport, but elsewhere would likely not have been able to negotiate to same prices as a local. Sticker price is almost always the foreigner price, at least when it’s matching or higher than the price one would pay back home.
I’m almost certain I’ve seen $5 “lightning” headphones here in the midwestern US.
I wish I could still get a higher end phone with an SD card slot. I’m holding onto my s20 ultra (I like the pen) until I’m forced out for security update reasons.
Yeah. I have t mobile, so the xperia 1 V, and the newly released but not officially sold in the US xperia 1 VI would work, but rare phones tend to lack support, amd I can’t bring myself to shell out $1400 for a phone like that.
I haven’t seen a 2.5mm jack on a phone in a long time. I still have a 2.5 to 3.5mm adapter that I used to listen to music on my flip phone in 2006 though.
Imagine inheriting a GOG account originally registered by your great-great granpa containing ungodly amount of games you can’t possibly play all of them in a lifetime.
There is VM software like VirtualBox you can use the run older versions of Windows. I’ve had better experience running old games through Windows XP in VirtualBox than directly on Windows 10.
To be fair, a lot of GOG games are already for CPUs and OS’s that don’t exist. Like, a significant amount of their library was meant to run in DOS on a 486. They’re pretty fucking good at making that not be a problem.
Like other mentioned, a lot of old games sold right now actually packaged with dosbox. Some even packaged with Wine so it can run on different platforms. The real problem would be emulating current modern graphic stacks but that would be future preservists’ problem.
What exactly are people upset about? Other discussions on this topic appear to mostly involve people who already know what’s wrong. Something about new player experience and bots?
If you struggle with buying too much stuff just because it is on sale: remember that when you don’t buy during sales and only buy what you want to play immediately, even full price, you are paying less overall.
There is just no point in hoarding. Whatever you bought and didn’t play immediately is gonna be on sale again. So either play it within the next two weeks or so or don’t buy.
Whatever you bought and didn’t play immediately is gonna be on sale again.
And often with even greater discout. So mny games I bought on sale because of courseI will play them, never did and are now available on sale for fraction of the price I paid
I’ll throw a caveat on certain things that get delisted…this is my biggest poison on Steam. Just grabbed Forza Horizon 4 because of its announced delisting in December.
I thought this might be a similar situation to Ghost of Tsushima where a PSN account is only required for online play, but Ragnarok has no multiplayer.
I don’t understand why Sony is so insistent on this. PSN is still unsupported in 170+ territories; this requirement is just going to turn most of those “would-be” buyers in those territories into pirates.
At this point I’m convinced that companies intentionally reduce access to their properties because making examples of a few pirates by making them pay millions of dollars is more profitable than legitimately selling games to a few thousand people
Would bet my life that that is why you can’t legitimately buy most old Nintendo games online
My theory is that it’s middle-mamagement nonsense. There are too many execs running around with nothing to do, so they come up with little projects to justify their jobs, and it always defaults to stuff like requiring PSN accounts that will fuck up their brand on PC long-term, but will make the numbers go up for this quarter so the one exec stands out. Or like you say, going after a pirate which generates a bunch of headlines but ultimately makes no real difference to piracy in general.
I suspect it’s more about tracking users. By requiring psn accounts they can see who also has a ps4/5 but is also buying for PC. In addition gives them more insight into the different markets, etc.
I mean, the whole point of a PSN account is to collect data on you and have greater control over their software.
Sony's not set up to do business in those countries to begin with, so they're not really losing anything to piracy from those users. They've already had to issue refunds to buyers from those regions with the Helldivers fiasco, so it's pretty clear that there is something blocking Sony from selling games in those countries. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the required account linking is why Sony can't sell to those areas.
For now… 🖕🏽 They worded that so weasely, they’re just waiting for the storm to pass and for Legal to come up with some compelling reason why they’re totally “obligated” to make it happen, “hands tied” “so sorry” and all that.
Fuck Sony. They made this SOP way back when, and there’s no way they let this stop them forever. It’s all about profit, not what “we” want.
I’ve been a AAA developer for almost 2 decades, and there is no way in hell they did not explicitly sign to have the sony account linking. I didn’t like the way he acted on twitter acting like the poor indy dev getting wrecked by the tyrant, when he was hoping it would fly.
He thought it would be okay to sell your data for his chance at making a game. When it backfired due to popularity, he didn’t take any responsibility and let sony look bad. I bet there’s a lot of people at Sony who didn’t like that.
I agree, he made his bigger partner look bad. Even if sony didn’t force this (which I’d be surprised about), their own board probably did. “Oh you just pissed off our biggest partner, that doesn’t seem great for business”
I feel like GN really went for the throat releasing their hit piece right as asus was launching another one of these. Hopefully it gets hit with some shit sales and encourages asus to pull it’s head out of it’s ass.
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