Goodeye8

If your online DRM free game store closes down do you expect to go to the publisher and say that same thing? Or do you have all your DRM free games downloaded and stored locally?

Part of the reason Valve gets away with it is that PC is an open platform. If you don’t want to buy from Valve you don’t have to buy directly from Valve. If you find a better deal elsewhere you can buy the game elsewhere. That’s not true for consoles. When it comes to digital only on Playstation you pay the price Sony tells you to pay because nobody except Sony is allowed to sell on Playstation. If Sony decides to jack up the price you just have to deal with it. If Sony refuses to put their games on sale you just have to deal with it.

The argument about removing your library is true for Valve (less so for GOG because you can just download all your installers and store them locally) but I think that’s a problem of the law. I think the law should catch up to digital media and give it the same rights as physical media. I hope SKG movements makes enough headway to lay the groundwork for someone else to come along and establish actual ownership of digital media.

While there are a lot of reasons why getting rid of physical media is bad (such as physical media getting certain consumer protections that digital currently doesn’t) I’m going to try to make an argument I think you’d understand. From the image in the post Dead space digital version costs 69.99 but Dead Space physical version costs 18. Why does it cost 69.99 digitally and 18 physically? Because corporations like money. A physical disk cuts into their profit margin. They could’ve made 139.98 by selling the game to two people but instead they only made 69.99 (I know the numbers aren’t accurate and from physical sales corporations make even less but for the sake of the argument I’ll stick to those numbers) because only the first person paid the corporations and when that person was done they sold it to the second person who didn’t pay the corporations anything. In a sense physical media cost corporations a sale. But that’s one of the benefits of consoles for consumers. You can actually get old physical disks relatively cheap on the second hand market. Now you could argue that physical disk users are a minority and you’re probably right, but the fact that a physical market exists keeps corporations in check. If a game is priced too high you can always see if you can find a physical version for cheaper. But if there’s no physical version available you pay what they tell you to pay. Digital only on a closed platform is just giving corporations more control over the pricing of games and we know they want to jack up the price.

I’m with you, I prefer digital media over physical. But my digital media is also bought on an open platform so I can choose where I get the best deal when buying digital media. I don’t have to pay the price Steam gives me, I can buy the game on GOG or Itch or a plethora of third party sellers. Despite the media being digital I retain (some) control over the pricing. That’s not true for consoles so on consoles digital only is a horrible idea.

Last time I checked (which was somewhere within the last 3 years) not only will the snap version get installed but if you force a non-snap version of the software and do an update it will replace the non-snap version with the snap version. It’s the kind of idiotic shit I’d expect from Microsoft.

And it’s their prerogative if they choose to do so. That’s not the same as Trump pushing his policies onto other countries.

And it’s not other countries. It’s right-wing parties who are using Trump for inspiration, it doesn’t automatically mean those parties are in power. In a parliamentary system, if they have any power then in most cases they’re in a coalition with center-right parties who will act as a stop-gap to their most extremist ideas. Even if they wanted to do like Trump does they have a much harder time doing that.

Let’s say you and me are neighbors. If I don’t listen to my wife, kids, extended family and set up stupid rules in my house, does that affect you? No. If I set up a stupid rule where guests can’t flush the toilet does that affect you? Not really unless you come and visit. If I decide to walk around in my house with a loaded gun, does that affect you? No.

But if I come to you house, punch you in the face and tell you “Your wife now runs the house and I will be checking that she is the one running the house” does that affect you? Absolutely. That’s a simplified version of what happened in Venezuela. If kick your door in, shove a gun in your face and tell you “This house is now mine. Either deal with it or fuck off” does that affect you? Absolutely. That’s a simplified version of what Trump would in Greenland.

What you’ve described are domestic issues that don’t violate the sovereignty of another country. What I’ve described as a bad precedent is an international issue where there actions directly violate the sovereignty of another country. They’re two different things.

I agree, he’s absolutely making the statement only from the perspective of his own interests. But just because he himself doesn’t think beyond his own interest it doesn’t mean it’s not setting (if actually followed through) a precedent where taking land by force is acceptable.

Sadly he’s saying something far more sinister. He’s basically saying that it doesn’t matter if you’ve lived somewhere for 500 years, someone else can come and say “This is mine now, fuck off”. Basically he’s stating that Russia has claim to whatever land they’ve conquered from Ukraine or that Israel has claim to all the lands they’re taking from Palestine.