In my eyes it is the same difference between buying a DVD/Blueray movie, or "buying" it from a video-on-demand service. But then, I don't know if there are video-on-demand services where you "buy" a movie for continuous viewing, for as long as you subscribe to their service (or until you are banned from it).

As long as it is made clearer so that no customers have any misconceptions related to what they are entitled to, like some Steam/Origin customers seem to think they have any kind of rights to "purchased" games, while it is in fact just a terminable service not really different from OnLive (streamed games service). Part of the problem is that services like Steam/Origin act as if you are actually purchasing games from them (even using such terms as "buying" and "purchasing"), but then their EULA and TOS tells a different story. I think it is intentional from them to muddle the customers' understanding of their "rights", because less people would be willing to pay 50-60€ for terminable games.

For some this service model may work better, ie. people who constantly play and buy more and more games and constantly move to newer games. For game "collectors", who might consider games more as a work of art it is not as good.

Anyway, as the article suggested, maybe more and more games in the service model will go to being "free", ie. the money comes either from ads, and/or from micro-payments.

That's my feeling too. Hell, even GOG says "Here you can download your owned games as well as their bonus content" in My account, and then says games are licensed in the EULA. I'm not too worried about that though. What are they going to do? Send a team of monks to break down my door and take my backups?

I also feel it should not be allowed to sell a game as a physical, retail product that has online DRM requirements. If The Witcher 2 sales are anything to go by, physical still kicks digital's ass. I'd venture to say that people who still buy physical games don't want them tied with DRM. People still buy a boxed PC game that's pretty much useless because of the DRM. My money is on them being reluctant buyers, otherwise, why not just buy it digitally?

It all comes down what people are willing to accept.

Possible services are:
- We offer you the possibility to play this game and some gimmicks, provided you let us check your system every so often and in case we are down which hopefully never occurs that it, game over.
- We guarantee you a 99.5% timewise playability for at least 5 years and will compensate you financially if you find we do not deliver on these terms. In fact we signed an insurance that will compensate you in case we cannot for any reason. Also we will respect your privacy and never really check what you are doing except maybe once after installation. Also you can completely shut down our client if you wish so.

Of course I would prefer version two but right now only version one is out. However many customers are completely satisfied. So what can we do?

I really admire the people fighting for more consumer rights. It's like a truly almost all unselfish and at the same time gigantic task.
I thought you already are a dirty arrhing pirate or at least was in the past. :)

Heh, not necessarily... Besides trolling here on the GOG.com forums, I still invest a crapload of my hard-earned money on commercial shit so....

I have a question for you, Timppu: When according to you and all the other Steam haters here Valve spends all their time just banning people left, right and center for no reason whatsoever, how can Steam then have between 3-5 million active users a day + between 30-40 million accounts? That shouldn't be possible if Valve have banned all these people should it? So are they all people who have their accounts banned and then create new ones so that in reality only about a 1000 poeple use Steam (including me) and we just create an insane amount of accounts each time Valve bans us? Is that what you are saying?
Or is the truth that many of us have used Steam for years with no problems whatsoever and hence actually DO own our games on Steam because Gabe just haven't gotten around to banning us yet? I'm sure Timppu that Gabe is monitoring my account and is just waiting for an excuse to ban me and my 358 games there and all the money I have payed (and will pay for future games) because that makes so much sense from a business standpoint - ban all your users because that will make you a ton of money, right?

As kavazovangel pointed out up-thread a bit (and as gets mentioned quite often), we don't buy computer games, and have never bought computer games. We have bought licences for those games. Licences which can be (theoretically) taken away at any moment.

In a 'games as a service' situation, that aspect of licensing is enforceable (assuming we ignore certain legally questionable alternatives). In a 'games as a product' situation, that aspect of licensing is not enforceable.

Whether you like or loathe Steam/Origin is irrelevant to that point.

And, ultimately, this is not about Steam, or Origin, or GMG, or whatever. This is about how games are treated in law, and by extension what rights we, as gamers, have to those games.

As I understand matters (and please someone correct me if I am wrong):
- if we buy games, then we have ownership, which means we can legally do whatever we damn well please with them, short of copying and distributing them en mass.

- if we subscribe to games, then we have no ownership, which means we have no right to them after the subscription has ended.

The stuff Valve provides has generally been accepted by consumers as beneficial as a service. Consistent updates, occasional new content, achievements, cloud support, etc. If you want to see "games as a service" done in a consumer and media approved way look no further.

First sentence is right. Second one is wrong.

Licences can only be taken away if such an action was present in said license agreement or if a limited running time was agreed upon. Otherwise the license runs forever. Examples are almost all games on discs in the past (say before Spore) or all GOG games. And it's a big difference too.

The licensing vs. ownership debate ignores one key issue: while you don't "own" your game, you do own your licence to it, and the publisher is not at liberty to deprive you of that licence in any jurisdiction. Whether they withdraw online services is up to them, but any measures that they take that prevent you from using the software legally in a manner that does not reasonably depend on online services is against the law in most countries.

So if Blizzard were to pull WoW's servers offline, it would not be reasonable to expect Blizzard to provide the means to carry on playing. The online services were an integral part of the game.

However, if EA were to suddenly shut down Origin and render copies of Crysis 2 or Dragon Age 2 useless without providing alternative means to play the games offline, then they would effectively be committing theft, not to mention violating their own EULA.

Steam's regular use of account lockouts for bounced payments is illegal in most European countries if the account concerned has games on it that are not related to the failed transaction. The purchase of two games at separate times on Steam is considered to be two separate contracts and so Valve is in violation of their obligation regarding the older licence. Steam is a service, but the game I've bought is a product. If Valve chooses to lock me out of the Steam service on the basis of the SSA, fine, but they are then required to provide me with a way to access my games.

Most countries deem software to be products and therefore subject to the same consumer protection laws relating to products. This includes guarantees, the violation of which usually constitutes a criminal offence.

The reason that publishers are pushing to move games to a service model is that

(a) disputes are then handled mainly under civil law and it is much harder and the risk much greater for the average person to bring such a case to court. If a publisher violates their obligations under, say, the UK Sale of Goods Act, the person affected need only inform the police, but if it's a service, they have to bring the issue before a court of civil law. That can get nasty. And

(b) service models give the publisher the right to unilaterally revoke a licence without good cause.

Some thoughts about fairness in no particular order:

1) Banning should be done not as a punitive measure, but as a measure to protect other users.

With that in mind, if someone keeps bullying other users on the forums, his forums privileges should be revoked, but not necessarily his gaming privileges.

Revoking the entire account should be reserved for particularly dastardly deeds (ex: trying to bring down the servers).

2) Whether games should be services or goods should be made inherently obvious by how the game works.

If a game has a single-player/LAN component, this should be sold as a good.

If the game has components that require the operation of servers, that should be sold as a service.

In some case, it should be feasible that a game that has both should be sold as a good (for the single-plauer/LAN part) with additional service costs being paid to assess the online multiplayer component.

3) Service components should be priced fairly according to what is provided

Services where only server hosting is provided should be priced much more cheaply than services where active improvements and bug fixing are being done.

4) Shutting down a service is acceptable provided that:

a) You shut down user access that would allow for further service payments

b) All users have a time stamp indicating how long they are entitled to use the service for before paying again and you don't shut down the service until all time stamps are expired.

5) Thou shall not double-dip

Games (or their individual parts) can be sold as a good or a service, but not both.

In particular, if you sell a massive online multiplayer game as a good and then charge them additional monthly fees, hordes of gamers will lawfully break down your door, loot your home and run away with all your worldly possession in righteous indignation.

They don't 'owe' you anything. You agree to whatever their terms & conditions are when you buy the game. The stuff that is in the Terms & Conditions is pretty much your rights & they've probably had some legal monkey look over it to make sure it's reasonably watertight.

Edit: Also they use the term license as in license to play the game, not license to own it so they can bypass a lot of the legal ramifications.

Ah, yes, you are right. My mistake.

Just dug out an old Software Licence Agreement (specifically, Medieval: Total War), and under 'Termination' it does say the licence will be considered automatically terminated if you fail to comply with any terms and conditions in the SLA. Of course (if I read it right), that includes selling it at a boot fair when you're done with it :-)

If this practise is illegal why is then nobody really sueing Steam and spank their butts for it. Why is nobody forcing them to change their TOS. What is european law good for, if you can't drag them to your court and afterwards throw them in your dungeon.

Quite simply because it is a matter of a court of civil law and nobody is willing to risk the considerable expense as a private person to bring it before court. Most are just forced to accept the lost 50 euros.

No court will affirm the invalidity of certain portions of an EULA until they are challenged by a plaintiff.

This kind of stuff gets challenged all the time with productivity software because companies investing in this software have a considerable interest in protecting their rights. The average gamer, on the other hand, is hardly willing to put tens of thousands of euros on the line for a 50 euro game.

And the German consumer affairs' office also seems to display little interest in the matter.