If the content is not stored locally and DRM free, then you don’t own it. Don’t pay for content that you can’t own. 🏴☠️
Is there any platform or medium where I can buy locally stored and DRM-free software? Even if I buy a game on disc I am fucked, cause most games need updates. I can only name GOG.
itch.io is fantastic. Mostly indie stuff with some bigger name stuff, but it’s by far the best out there for devs.
It’s hard to find quality games in the sea of single dev weekend projects on itch io…
Humble (the company that sells Bundles) has some games listed as DRM free games in their store. Never bought individual games from them, but I have gotten DRM free games in their bundles.
Also, fuck GOG. They are owned by CD Project Red, the piece of shit lawyers who trademarked the term cyberpunk.
Pretty sure they bought the trademark from the company who owned it previous (for a 1980s era board game if I recall correctly). They bought it to prevent shitty 2077 clones with the same name from popping up. I haven’t heard of them actively pursuing copyright infringement against others who use cyberpunk.
What are you even talking a out, there are plenty of games with cyberpunk in the tittle on steam.
The fuck are you talking about wrt Cyberpunk? It was already the trademarked name of the boardgame that all this new shit draws from, the boardgame that coined the fucking term in the first place.
Not much of a gamer lately, huh?
Updates are always an option now, so games are no longer released in a very stable state. And by not very stable, I mean “crashes immediately with X company hardware”, “frame rate drops to 1 frame/s in certain areas”, or “quest line is bugged and incompletable”
Day one updates generally aren’t optional… With a publisher who values polish like Nintendo? Generally they’re playable, but a bit rough. On average, they’re literally impossible to play through. It’s a real problem in modern gaming
I bought DRM-free TV episodes from Google Play (IIRC). Everything was great until codecs got updated a couple of years later and the videos were suddenly jerky to the point of unwatchability.
Even when I own it, there’s no guarantee I get to keep it.
You can probably play it properly on a PC using something like VLC (A pretty powerful video player)
In this case Sony is taking away TV shows that people purchased. They can be purchased on physical media that will be playable as long as you have the disc. The DRM on DVD and Bluray discs can be easily removed to make backups that will play on anything forever.
As for games, everything on GOG is DRM free. They have downloads for the installers so you can keep a backup copy to install decades from now even if GOG is long gone by then.
Sony understands only one language… MONEY. I stopped buying their products since they installed a root kit decades ago in my computer to prevent it from ripping my legally bought CDs to my computer. I had to reinstall windows to get rid of that virus. Never again! And all my electronics were Sony back then
Hey, just wanted to say I’m glad a few of us remember the rootkit fiasco. I still won’t buy Sony products today.
Same here. This was such a hostile move I never bought anything “Sony” after that.
They do something similar on their smart TVs - it’s not possible to run Kodi with torrent streaming plugins, they block it on purpose.
How is it blocked? Could you work around it with a debrid service? i.e no torrent protocol
A) which CD did you buy that had the Sony rootkit? B) decades ago? No. It’s only been 18 years.
What I love about this whole thing is that it’s not just Sony’s fault but they’re getting all the blame because WB would pull all their future content if Sony bad-mouthed them.
Sony choose to not offer refunds. Sony knew the contract when they agreed to sell the content. When something gets pulled from steam I can still download and install it.
How much of that money is theirs to refund? A portion of that sale went to WB? Why is WB not being asked to give a refund?
Sony entered in a contractual relationship with their customers and by Law the responsability ends there.
If you pay somebody to build you a garden shed and after 5 months of nothing happenning you complain and the builder can just say “sorry, the fly-by-night wood supliers whe paid for the wood just took of with our money, so you’re not going to get a shed and we’ll keep your money”, is that’s alright?!
Imagine what would it do to Trade and Business in general if any supplier could legally screw a customer over because they themselves chose to to engage a fishy entity as their own supplier who screwed them, so they just passed on that loss legally to all their costumers.
No, the way things work is that each contractual relationship is isolated from all others, so Sony got full freedom to chose what kind of contract they signed with WB and what contract they “signed” with their retail customers (note that retail sales are implied Contracts and there are legally mandatory implied clauses in any contracts with retail customers, covering for example legally mandated guarantees periods) - likely profiting a lot by chosing the short-term commitment with WB rather than one that tied WB for, say, 20 years - and any mismatch of obligations that might arise from that is entirelly the responsability of Sony.
Sony got to keep the profits from their own choices of licensing contracts and now it’s up to them to make up for the losses derived from the consequences that choice, on other contracts were they themselves were acting as the supplier.
It’s not the responsability of Customers to make sure what Sony’s chosen contractual relationships elsewhere are - Sony can engage in whatever contractual relationships it wants in whichever way it wants (and thus maximize their profits), but if it breaks their side of contract it has to pay the penalties for it, quite independently of why.
This is how Contract Law is designed exactly because otherwised it would make it impossible to Trade: if a purchaser had to track all contractual relationships of each supplier, then as those too were linked to the contracts of their own suppliers, of the supplier of the supplier and so on. So Contract Law neatly isolates each Contract relationship from all the rest and legal responsability starts and stops at that Contract (including the implied Contract in a Retail Sale) and only betwee the parties of that Contract unless very explicitly stated otherwise in the Contract.
So, have customers in this case entered into a Contractual Relationship where Sony gets to pull the plug whenever it feels like for any reason (which are probably invalid contractual conditions for retails customers in plenty of countries, though probably not the US which has near-zero consumer protections) in which case the problem is of the customers, or have they not in which case Sony is the one with the responsability (probably of refunding their customers) and it’s up to Sony to exercise whatever contract clauses they had with WB and claim compensation from them for their own breach of contract, if Sony had such clauses in their contract (if not, it was their own choice, so tough luck)?
Reminder that the largest brands regularly and shamelessly steal from small independent artists to sell for profit, knowing that the artists don’t have the resources to do anything about it: https://web.archive.org/web/20230726050616/https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/01/arts/design/digital-art-copyright-marvel-panini-wizards.html
And these are the companies trying to convince you that pirating big name media for your own personal use is theft.
Artistes must be between a rock and a hard place when even “legal” Spotify openly admits to screwing on royalties.
It’s an open secret that musicians get totally screwed by record labels.
I’m just shocked how many commenters here somehow seem to think that Sony can choose for their own profit to engage in contracts with mismatched responsabilities - i.e. a short-term contract with WB right next to a much longer term responsability towards retail customer - and not be financially responsible towards their retail customers at one end for the losses that arose from the termination of the very Contract Sony chose to sign at the opposite end.
Imagine if you hire somebody to build you a garden shed and they paid some fly-by-night company for the wood because they were cheaper and that company just to took off with the money. You think they could just legally turn to you, their customer, and say “sorry, we chose some fishy guys for the wood for your shed and they took the money and didnt gave us the wood, so now we’ll keep your money and you’re not going to get your shed. Bye bye!”.
Contract Law isolates Contractual responsabilities in any one contract (including the implied contract of a Retail Sale) to the parties in that contract alone exactly because long term contractual commitments would be de facto impossible in a world were every purchaser also ran risks on every one of their supplier’s own contracts as purchasers, in turn having the risks of their suppliers’ suppliers’ and so on as deep as the chain went.
I think most rational people hate the game rather than Sony directly. We don’t care if that’s the rules Sony or anyone else has to play by. It’s time for the industry to evolve or die.
In-fact I reckon if we see digital retailers reject “selling” digital content because it’s not profitable due to end customers rejecting the terms, the studios licensing the content would evolve overnight.
I’ve been boycotting Sony since the late 90s exactly because they not only played the game in the most anti-consumer way possible, but they very activelly lobbyied for the kind of legislation like the DMCA.
This is maybe one of the companies who spent the most money to make “the game” the incredibly rigged mess it is today.
Your naive “blame the game” reaction is exactly what companies like Sony want: blame the puppets not the puppeteers.
Ever since their Media Production Division took over the management of the company in the 90s (before it was mostly the Engineering side that led it, hence why they were once famous for the exceptional quality of their eletronics) they’ve very much been reliably acting in the most corrupt, abusive, evil ways possible.
I’m not defending Sony. Though I am also trying to discuss the industry standard practices that they operate in. That said how come Valve lets you keep any purchased game after the license is revoked but nearly every other digital store doesn’t or is hit and miss. It’s clearly something in the contract/licensing deal.
In other words Sony could choose to play hard ball and only sign contracts that permit continuous use of content after purchasing it. Thereby allowing something closer to actual ownership. Though the question is whether Sony and other digital marketplaces can convince rights holders to agree to such terms in the movie/tv industry.
