I guess this comes under both technology and economics.
But yeah I don’t get it. You pay money for a game, you now own that game. That’s how a transaction works. If I don’t own it what on earth did I pay all that money for? How can companies get away with this?
In: Technology
Imagine you wake up tomorrow and Steam says, “we made enough money, we quit, Steam has been permanently disabled.” (Obviously it wouldn’t happen quite like that, but still.) You don’t have a way to play the games you paid for. You don’t have a physical copy of it that you can just play without support from an outside source. You are relying on the service to continue existing.
If you buy a paper book, you own it. Nobody can stop you from using it. But if Amazon wanted to, they could brick your kindle remotely and hold your books hostage for more money or a subscription service or something else.
That’s really what people mean when they say you don’t own digital media; you’re paying for access to it and must use it within the framework of the digital supplier.
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