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Definitely.

A few, at least.

I don't care.

Not certain.

Definitely not.

Other.

View poll. / Abstain.

[Akura]

Personally, I think owning a game should be like owning a book. It's not as though a book publisher can come into your house and ransack your bookshelf and take back the book you paid for because you did something like doodled in the margins.

Right now, it's not as though you own what you paid for, it's more like a long-term rental with a (usually) one-time payment but with strings attached. And on the other end of said strings is a rocket-powered winch.

[Neonivek]

The problem with videogames is that you don't actually buy them but they pretend you do.

If a Company wanted to sell a book that you had to sign a contract before you bought... Sure by all means fine.

If a Comapny tried selling a book that after you bought it you couldn't use it until you signed a contract.  I'd go insane

Which is the problem with videogames. Heck by all means by definition if someone bought a videogame and didn't want to sign the EULA, shouldn't they get their money back BECAUSE the money was to pay for the game the contract was for?

[Cthulhu]

Yes, you should, and ostensibly you can.  In practice though, no one allows returns on computer games because of no-CD cracks.  It's a shrinkwrap license.

The situation kind of reminds me of World of Warcraft pre-Burning Crusade when Highlord Kruul was warping into major cities and wrecking everyone's shit.  He was a perfectly beatable boss and any half-competent raid could take him out, but they couldn't do it because for every competent level 60 who could help beat him, there were ten or eleven low level players feeding Kruul, who gained health for every kill.  There was nothing they could do but yell at everyone to leave the city so they could do something.

These problems could all be solved if people showed they weren't going to stand for it, but for every person who's willing to vote with his wallet, there are ten or eleven people who will buy the games anyway, and thus the problem never gets solved because the companies are still making money hand over fist.

[Neonivek]

Which is where I think the courts should step in.

Often Courts get involved because people don't have the fortitude to fix the problem with their wallets.

[Mephisto]

One thing I would like to see, though it should probably not be a law, is that buying a game is made more like buying a license, so that losing the disk doesn't mean losing access to the program. It's already that way with many MMO and on-line only games, which you can download anywhere but only run if you enter your licensing info. Of course, this would also necessitate some form of verification that verifies this information on-line, but if you're downloading it anyway you can probably afford the few extra seconds to log into your account. (I feel a load of DRM hate incoming)

You think you're actually buying a piece of software when you purchase a disk at a store? Hell, no. Read closer. Most of the time, the company is allowing you to use a license for its software. I'll admit, it's screwed up. Lose your disk? Too bad, buy another license.

[Neonivek]

The problem is some other programs, such as the software that lets people check taxes, outright state they are a License.

They arn't faking it. The "Read Closer" part is after you bought it.

[MrWiggles]

Returning products for refunds isn't a consumer right.

Warranties, to my knowledge are, but they are generally strict and do not guarantee full refunds for most circumstances.

I can't think of any product that offers a full refund for any real length of time (like a month or a week or so).

I also don't think we have less consumer rights then in general with other products.

[Neonivek]

Returning products for refunds isn't a consumer right

However you didn't BUY a product. You essentially made a downpayment on a contract.

Getting Downpayments back is a consumer right.

[inteuniso]

These problems could all be solved if people showed they weren't going to stand for it, but for every person who's willing to vote with his wallet, there are ten or eleven people who will buy the games anyway, and thus the problem never gets solved because the companies are still making money hand over fist.

That is the one problem with games going mainstream. I choose not to support Blizzard by not purchasing a single Blizzard game. Ever. I will never purchase any game from them again, simply because I don't agree with their practices and the shit they pulled with SC II. Unfortunately, they are making quite a handsome profit off of SC2, and will continue to pull shit like that.

I don't get what Kruul has to do with anything, but OK.

And well, yes, games are licenses. I wish they were more, "this is a copy of our runnable code, please feel free to play and do whatever, just don't make a profit off of it!"
and not "Appendix 3:A1 states that you are not allowed to play the game if you have installed software that the Company does not like. The Company feels free to install not only the runnable code, but extra programs as well, that may or may not affect your computer."

Games purchased should be licenses to play the compiled code provided, and that's it. Nothing more than that.

[Saint]

Pirating games is like pirating a blender.
Except pirating games actualy works better thanks to DRM.

[Frumple]

We've seen this before, many times. The reason there's a semi-violent hullabaloo over pirating games (and other digital "objects") is because it's not like pirating <anything physical>. The digital age is the first time the human species has ran into anything that can be flawlessly copied a functionally infinite amount without any noticeable degradation to either the copy or the copied. It's the reason that laws appropriately dealing with such things didn't exist when digital information came about, and we're having such a culture clash (such as it is) trying to fight it out to get ones that are reasonable.

To wit, you can steal a blender. You cannot steal code. You can copy it, and then delete the original, or steal the physical object the code is on, but the code itself? It's no different then the information being transmitted by the text in a book, except that it can be copied effectively infinitely with little to no effort and functionally no loss of quality. Etc, etc, so forth, so on. We've seen this dozens of times already

[G-Flex]

The digital age is the first time the human species has ran into anything that can be flawlessly copied a functionally infinite amount without any noticeable degradation to either the copy or the copied. It's the reason that laws appropriately dealing with such things didn't exist when digital information came about, and we're having such a culture clash (such as it is) trying to fight it out to get ones that are reasonable.

To a degree, yes, but trade in information has existed for a long time; it just hasn't been quite as important now. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright#History

Obviously, the circumstances have changed (it's easy as piss now for any individual to obtain and copy data), but the basic principles have been around for centuries.

[Fayrik]

Obviously, the circumstances have changed (it's easy as piss now for any individual to obtain and copy data), but the basic principles have been around for centuries.

Yes, I was going to say this isn't the first time it's happened. IP has been around for ages.
It's just now it's all different.

[Muz]

Yeah, EULA's can be pretty insidious. Remember when Blizzard tried to sue Starcraft 2 cheaters/modders?

That kind of bullshit, we shouldn't have to be subjected to.

Oh, on things like that, it's normally not because they want to do that, it's because they have to.

Only the most retarded businesses actually sue their over-passionate customers for cash. For the most part, they're doing it because if they don't, then it becomes much harder to sue people the next time someone hacks the game and steals bits of code or attempt to claim the code for themselves. Consistency and all.

I'm not sure what that Blizzard case was about, but it's how it is with a lot of suing in the games industry. You can't compare it to a book. In comparison, it's like as if doodling in the margins means that you'd be able to claim credit for the next few things he writes (even if it were not your intentions). The law makes it a lose/lose situation for companies in this case.

[Blank Expression]

(cheating, copying, hacking et cetera

Ohh I am sorry... Did you think I was speaking of anti-piracy?

Nope, they make the rules and they have terminated for things like "You bought something that wasn't ours. Terminate!"

all legally of course because according to companies you don't own squat. Your being "allowed" to play.

License isn't even accurate, they call it license, but read the EULA... They can take it back without refund on a whim. (sometimes even WITH your computer)

Edit Note: The tone of this wasn't to insult anyone but to show my frustration of the crud videogames, software, and hardware can get away with.

This is a litany of misinformation and misleading statements. None of this, aside from the technical fact that it is a license (and has been since very early days of computer game development), is true. In particular, the nonsense regarding termination of a license if "you bought something that wasn't ours" is incredibly, incredibly dishonest. And unless you have committed a serious tort rather than simple license violation (you do know what a tort is...right?) there is no way in hell, at least in the United States, that computer hardware can be confiscated. That can only be done at the discretion of a judge, either at the conclusion of a civil proceeding (to ensure that the IP is, at least in theory, protected from further tampering) or in order to prevent the destruction or tampering of evidence pursuant to a legal claim.

I say this as someone who has written EULAs and conversed with actual, rather than wannabe Internet, lawyers on the topic.


There are many problems in the game industry. This is not a significant one. The complaints early in the thread have the tinge of consumers who didn't do their own due diligence before putting money down on a purchase. I am cognizant of the risks of purchasing games and I, as a rule, don't buy games that I can't get on the Steam mid-year or Christmas sales, precisely because I don't want to burn $50 on a game that will be marked down in short order. As G-Flex noted--you do it to yourselves. And there are no Purple Hearts for self-inflicted wounds.