"Games as a service" is fraud.

[Delicieuxz]

On 11/5/2019 at 11:48 AM, stichman34 said:

Only just got you in my recommendations, and unfortunately, you've made a big legal slip up regardless of where you are. The big thing is, you still own the "body" as you kept refering to it as, the companies running the brain never take the body away from you. Ever. If you excersise your right to modify and reverse-engineer the product you paid for, after signing an EULA (which is legally a contract, if the law can be bent to accomidate the contract, it is)

EULAs are not legal contracts and are not legally binding. This has been tested in court multiple times with the courts ruling that an EULA cannot overrule actual laws and ownership rights. Some countries also have it as law that any terms which are not displayed on the exterior of a package cannot possibly be agreed to and therefore carry no weight.

 

Quote

they revoke your connection to the brain, they revoke the service part. The caveat is, you DO still own your licence, and software. You can modify, change or reverse-engineer all you want. That licence still works to make the software you own yours, just not in a full capacity. You pay for both a good (the licence to the software part) AND the service (to the server software). They can take the service away at any point, as per their EULA. They are not obligated to give you that part (the server software) at the end of the service's cycle, as it is NOT part of the good your licence gives you.

 

I think Ross has that part understood. He goes into detail about it in his videos.

 

 

 

Jim Sterling recently put out a video about a game becoming unplayable due to its DRM-authentication servers going offline, upsetting many people still playing the game. In this case, I think Disney is looking into patching-in a solution so owners can still install their game.

Something similar happened with TrackMania Sunrise, where the decrepit DRM doesn't work on OSes newer than Windows Vista and so people can't easily install and play the game.

Edited December 8, 2019 by Delicieuxz (see edit history)

[Zabeus]

3 hours ago, Delicieuxz said:

I think Disney is looking into patching-in a solution so owners can still install their game.

All they need to do is remove the calls to SecuRom. It's been done by many Steam publishers. In fact they could just upload one of the cracked executables floating around and call it a day. (not that they would, but either way it's not much work)

[BTGBullseye]

6 hours ago, RaTcHeT302 said:

I'm more annoyed about the fact that, people are only taking this problem seriously now, even though crap like this has happened before, with thousands of other games, but better late than never I guess.

That's because there are more games that get broken DRM systems, and WAY more people playing games now. This is the largest adult population that plays video games yet, which is going to start pushing the market in ways never before seen, and likely not entirely predictable ones either.

[BTGBullseye]

19 hours ago, RaTcHeT302 said:

lot's of people played TrackMania too : (

One game is not enough, it has to be a pervasive thing. Facts of life dude.

[Delicieuxz]

The latest furor over Blizzard's actions surrounding the release of Warcraft 3: Reforged could be relevant to game ownership violation arguments.

 

There are two major issues going on with the Warcraft 3: Reforged release:

 

- Reforged turned out to not be anything like what was advertised and is a case of false advertising

 

- Blizzard has replaced original Warcraft 3 with Reforged and has forced owners of original Warcraft 3 to download Reforged to keep playing with the original graphics

 

Original Warcraft 3 is around 1.4 GB in size, while reforged is something like 28 or so GB in size. This means owners of the original game have to download about 27 GB of data they have no use for just to keep playing the same game. Actually, they have to throw away 27 GB of their storage drive space to keep playing the game while losing many of its features, because Reforged lacks a bunch of features that the original game has.

 

I think that taking away people's access to original Warcraft 3 through Battle.net and forcing them to download ~27 GB of data that is useless to them while they lose many features that original Warcraft 3 has and that aren't included in Reforged would be a case of theft, or at minimum of game ownership rights being trampled by a software publisher.

 

People have discovered that, for now, the original Warcraft 3 can still be downloaded and played by installing a Blizzard test realm. I wonder if Blizzard will continue to leave that avenue open.

 

 

There is also the claim of Blizzard's that any custom maps or game modes created in Warcraft 3: Reforged are the property of Blizzard. I don't think that could carry legal weight and if I owned Reforged I'd want to release something in it just so I could then release it elsewhere as well and wave it in their faces.

 

 

Interestingly, after initially refusing to offer refunds, Blizzard has caved to the demands for refunds while people talked on Blizzard's forums about related topics such as potential class-action lawsuits and how it's illegal to deny refunds in Australia. I expect Blizzard allowed refunds in the face of the undeniable evidence that the delivered Warcraft 3: Reforged product does not match the advertised one.

Edited February 11, 2020 by Delicieuxz (see edit history)

[Delicieuxz]

There's something here that is relevant to the topic of game ownership rights.

 

Amazon executives conspired to smear fired worker who led protest over Covid-19 safety conditions

Quote

Amazon’s top lawyer crafted a strategy to scapegoat the man who organized a protest at a New York warehouse, calling the African-American ex-employee ‘not smart, or articulate.’ President Obama’s ex-spokesman helped carry it out.

Chris Smalls was fired on Monday, after he led up to 50 of his colleagues at a Staten Island warehouse to walk out in protest over what they described as unsafe working conditions at the mammoth facility, including the lack of protective gear for the workers. A number of political and media figures, including Democrat presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), condemned the firing.

 

Amazon General Counsel David Zapolsky’s strategy to deal with the fallout was to propose “strongly laying out the case for why the organizer’s conduct was immoral, unacceptable, and arguably illegal, in detail, and only then follow with our usual talking points about worker safety,” according to the notes from a daily meeting of the company’s top executives – including CEO Jeff Bezos – obtained by Vice on Thursday.

 

“He’s not smart, or articulate,” and the press focusing on him will put Amazon “in a much stronger PR position,” Zapolsky argued.

 

That scheming, plotting, trickstering that was done by an Amazon lawyer against an employee of Amazon is also done by publishers' lawyers to try to get all interpretations and all benefits favouring the publisher and copyright holder, and none favouring the customer and owner of the software instance. I think that devious approach with the Amazon lawyer is what should be counted-on as being done by software publisher lawyers. If you offer them an inch, they'll eagerly use the opening to take a mile and the shirt off your back and the shoes off your feet as well.

 

A lawyer is an advocate for hire, with their job being not to represent the law as it is intended or good to be, but to navigate and shape interpretation of the law to secure the most benefits and dismiss the most negatives for their employer. And in the course of their advocacy for their employer's interests, lawyers are also often liars for hire.

 

Note that research has suggested that lawyer is the #2 profession that's most populated by psychopaths.

 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyclay/2013/01/05/the-top-10-jobs-that-attract-psychopaths/#673aa964d80d

https://www.businessinsider.com/professions-with-the-most-psychopaths-2018-5?op=1

 

That means that when dealing with an adversarial industry lawyers, you shouldn't expect that they will experience moral scruples in what they argue. They have a job to do for their employer, and the better they perform it, the better their reputation and earnings will likely become.

 

And big company lawyers probably work directly for CEOs, with the job of CEO being the #1 profession most populated by psychopaths. The pressure to trample over anyone to get the desired outcome in that chain of command could be immense.

 

But the mindset there means that they likely aren't looking at or don't care about long-term ramifications for society, least of all gamer and game-purchaser interests in their advocacy, and are simply trying to secure all immediate and lasting benefits for their employer and the industry they profit by working in and serving.

 

Large gaming publishers can afford the 'best' lawyers, and their definition of a 'best' lawyer is likely going to be the one that argues whatever it takes to accomplish whatever the publisher wants accomplished.

[BTGBullseye]

Ross may be getting additional support against the software as a service philosophy as a whole:

 

[Delicieuxz]

That's neat that they went into the effort of looking for alternatives to Adobe's subscription service. However, at the end of it all, they still stuck with Adobe's subscription because there wasn't something comparably efficient to Adobe's interconnected app ecosystem.

 

Hopefully , other editing software developers will take note from that critique and aim to challenge Adobe in that area, as well.

[BTGBullseye]

19 hours ago, Delicieuxz said:

That's neat that they went into the effort of looking for alternatives to Adobe's subscription service. However, at the end of it all, they still stuck with Adobe's subscription because there wasn't something comparably efficient to Adobe's interconnected app ecosystem.

 

Hopefully , other editing software developers will take note from that critique and aim to challenge Adobe in that area, as well.

That's my hope as well.

[GummyChicken]

i wanted to add my "witness".

Prologue: i am university student in Italy in "Scienze del Patrimonio Audiovisivo e dei Nuovi Media" (Sciences of the AudioVisual Heritage and New Media) and the main subject is Preservation of the Cinema (as fisical film and the movie itself).

Even if the statal funds are limited like the budget of "Chosen, well of souls", preserving the movie is an important dilemma because it is considered Cultural Heritage in pretty much every state even around the world (from what i know, many states from Asia asked support to these "experts of preservation" to save their movie heritage).

 

One of the first topics you learn is how movies were produced... and disposed from the beginning of the Cinema to almost the 1960's. When a film was printed and showed in the theaters, it was ok. When such film was replaced by a different movie, it was forcefully sent back to the producer's study and literally CHOPPED WITH AN AXE so that nobody could ever use that film again.

Why? 1) it wasn't profitable anymore; 2) the film could be recycled.

Only with the advent of Television and then Home Formats it was noted that "hey, these old movies may actually still have some value!"

 

At the end, of the Silent Era today we have LESS than 5% of the whole heritage since the rest has been destroyed by time, natural catastrophies, wars, fires, but mostly by the hands of producers.

 

 

 

does it sound familiar?

[Delicieuxz]

As another example in the series of game publishers claiming things that just aren't true, Ubisoft recently claimed that the recurring subscription fee to access certain content for the latest TrackMania game wasn't actually a subscription, but was merely paying to play the game multiple times over (kind of exactly like what a subscription is). After being mocked mercilessly by the internet-going gaming community, Ubisoft conceded that the subscription is a subscription.

 

What Ubisoft's Free to Play + subscription model for the new TrackMania means is that people keep paying for games without ever coming into ownership of them. Ubisoft are reportedly offering $10, $30, and $60 subscription options, with the $60 option being for 3 years of feature access, which means that rather than paying the full-price of a AAA game and owning it forever, people can pay AAA full-price and have full access to a game for only 3 years. Which sounds better to you: 3 years of access, or endless ownership for the same money?

 

I want to make the point that this is a part of Ubisoft's fight against game ownership and is something Ubisoft have been working towards for a very long time. They'e designing their games to deliberately interfere with people's ownership rights over their games, or to outright prevent people from owning their games, because they don't want people to own the game they pay for.

 

Game streaming, where people don't install anything on their systems and only pay a subscription to access a streaming service, has been something Ubisoft were looking forward to long before game streaming was around and quickly discovered to be a relatively-shit experience.

 

Ubisoft CEO: Only One Console Generation Left, Future is Streaming

Talking A Good Game: Yves Guillemot, Ubisoft Co-founder And CEO

 

I think that Ubisoft are among the worst and fiercest in the industry for trying to obstruct game ownership rights. And I think that their quest in denying people game ownership rights is negatively affecting the games they design.

 

So, that's what I think the TrackMania pay-setup is largely about: Denying ownership to people who want the game.

 

But say that Ubisoft had succeeded in having it be accepted that their TrackMania subscription wasn't a subscription but was really 'paying for the game multiple times' - did Ubisoft really think about what that would mean? Then someone could argue that because their license isn't a subscription license that it must therefore be a perpetual license, and therefore they bought the game with those extra features and Ubisoft has no right to interfere or restrict their access to play the game after any amount of time.

 

Maybe Ubisoft was quick to concede that their subscription service is a subscription service because they finally took a moment to consider where it not being a subscription service leads to under the law.

 

BTW, Ubisoft's current EULA, or the one I read a couple of months ago, employs desperately-reaching wording to deny (only in claim, not in reality) customer ownership over purchased Ubisoft games and is full of holes. I don't feel a need to point out the failures of the EULA because so long as their EULA remains as it was the last time I read it a couple of months ago, it's as good as non-existent (sort of like any EULA).

 

 

And the moral here is: Don't believe what publishers say, or what their PR spokespeople and lawyers say, just because they said it. They have no qualms with lying to people's faces to get more given to themselves and more taken away from everyone else. They do it eagerly.

 

And, keeping that in mind, I would say that EULAs have no validity to them whatsoever as all of a customers' rights, and all of a publisher's or copyright-holder's rights in a point-of-sale transaction where goods are exchanged for money, are established in copyright, consumer, and property law, and an EULA doesn't mean squat after those things have had their say. A legally-sound EULA is surmised with a © symbol, and anything an EULA claims which is beyond the meaning of a © symbol is typically ignoreable.

 

Wrapping-up the 'publishers tend to claim things that just aren't true' lesson, an EULA is ultimately the equivalent of a publisher claiming that loot boxes aren't gambling but are "surprise mechanics".

 

 

Here's Jim Sterling's video on Ubisoft's TrackMania not-a-subscription subscription service:

 

 

 

EA: Loot boxes aren't loot boxes, they're "surprise mechanics" 
Bethesda: Paid-mods aren't paid-mods, they're "mini DLC"
Ubisoft: A subscription isn't a subscription, it's just paying for a game multiple times over

[Delicieuxz]

Now for some news which appears in favour of game ownership and ownership rights.

 

Following a GoG announcement that Epic Games is officially integrated into GoG, Tim Sweeney advocated on Twitter for "universal ownership" of digital items - referring to games people purchase. By "universal ownership", he means that when someone buys a game or DLC on one platform, they receive access to their purchase on all participating platforms.

 

 

Tim Sweeney's larger commentary is this:

Quote

Ultimately, ownership of digital items should be a universal notion, independent of stores and platforms. So much of the digital world today is frustrated by powerful intermediaries whose toll booths obstruct open commerce to keep customers and their purchases locked in.

 

Epic’s committed to working with all willing ecosystems to connect our stores and recognize universal ownership. Early bits include purchase integration with Humble and others, and library visibility to GOG. A lot more will be coming over time.

 

Possible implementation strategies: federated (each store maintains its own ownership records, but can communicate with other stores and recognize theirs too); clearinghouse (stores agree on a common ownership database); decentralized (a blockchain type leger tracks ownership).

 

There's no question this thing will start with federated ownership, because it's easy to adopt incrementally without disrupting existing stores. But that's doesn't scale well, so it's probably not the ultimate solution.

 

Tim also made some replies in response to people commenting on his statements:
 

"If ownership of games is universal, then you don’t need every store or platform to operate forever, you just need some that do continue on."

 

"Epic's aim is to bring players in, not lock players in. Free games, exclusives, and free Epic Online Services for developers of other games are all part of this effort to bring players in. Interconnection of stores and accounts avoids lock-in."

 

"Each company is advancing in different areas, GOG with a universal launcher, Epic with account and purchasing integration. Epic Online Services (cross-platform friends, matchmaking, accounts, etc) support all platforms and stores!"

 

"Wouldn’t it be purely better for everyone if Steam purchases were available on other stores and platforms that hosted the game, and if Steam hosted the PC version of games you’ve bought on other stores and platforms?"

 

"The cost of download bandwidth is sooo small. Any store should be easily able to pay bandwidth costs for third party games from the money they do make by selling games, and any reasonable store would love to have customers frequently visiting."

 

 

This comment in particular ("possession!=ownership"), looked-at in the context of his emphasis on "universal ownership" seems to show that Tim Sweeney is actually on the side of game ownership. In acknowledging the difference between mere possession and actual ownership, he is saying that his statements of "universal ownership" take, as granted, that people own their purchased games.

 

Tim's expressed position on the matter is in agreement with GoG's own, as GoG openly supports the fact that people own their purchased games:

 

 

 

 

Related to the topic of game ownership, further down in the comments replying to Tim's posts, a lengthy debate took place between someone who claims to be a lawyer and another poster regarding the topic of game ownership. The lawyer argued that EULAs are enforceable in the US and that people don't own their games. The other person told them that's not so.

 

 

In the course of the debate the lawyer continually used false arguments including misrepresentations, inapplicable conflations between topics courts have ruled on, appeals to authority, and dishonest tricks in general to try to simply have their argument accepted as fact.

 

A more detailed look at the tricks they employed is here:

 

- They appealed many times to a Wikipedia list of court cases regarding use of online services where the verdict was in favour of the "clickwrap" user agreements. They claimed those verdicts in-favour of the clickwrap agreements show that EULAs are considered binding under law. However, all those cases were about the rights of a user of an online service who had to agree to a Terms of Service to use somebody-else's service, and not about the rights a person receives when they purchase a good. Their argument here was false and disingenuously tried to conflate the rulings regarding services to what the law is for goods, when the rules for services (which involves using somebody-else's property) are different than the rules for your purchased goods (which are your own property): You indeed have to agree to the terms of another person in order to use their property (such as their offered service), but, outside of the law, someone else can't dictate terms on how you may use your own property (which are your purchased goods).

 

 

- They repeatedly pretended that a lower court's older ruling on a matter (ToS agreement validity) which is irrelevant to the topic of purchased game ownership supercedes the higher Supreme Court's newer ruling on the exact matter of purchased good ownership. But when it comes to rulings, newer takes precedent over older, and higher court rulings overrule lower court rulings - and the Supreme Court is the US' highest court and its decisions apply to all of the US and take precedence over all the rest of the US' courts and overrule any prior ruling that is in contradiction to the Supreme Court's rulings.

 

 

- They claimed that the US Supreme Court's ruling which literally addressed and encompassed all goods was being interpreted too broadly when used to claim the first-sale doctrine applies to all goods, while simultaneously claiming that the Feldman v. Google ruling, which didn't at-all relate to the topic at-hand and was about a online user ToS agreement for a service, meant that EULAs are binding on purchasers of software goods - while also ignoring that even if that verdict had meant what they claimed (and it didn't), it would have still been superceded anyway by the newer Supreme Court ruling that the first-sale doctrine applies to all goods (with software being specifically mentioned by the Supreme Court as subject to the first-sale doctrine).

 

 

- They did the former while claiming that the Feldman v. Google verdict included mention of the decision applying to goods, when the Feldman v. Google court order only mentions the word "good" twice and neither time supports their claim. The two uses of the word "good" in the Feldman v. Google order are these:

 

"Plaintiff filed an Amended Complaint, which eliminated the express contract claim and asserted instead claims styled as (1) breach of implied contract, (2) breach of implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing"

 

“Standardization of agreements serves many of the same functions as standardization of goods and services; both are essential to a system of mass production and distribution."

 

Heck, that even shows the opposite of what the lawyer claimed: The court order states that 'goods vs services' is standardized, and essentially so, and so not open to interpretation based on the type of good or service it is or exemption based on a seller writing an EULA.

 

 

- They argued that a brief Wikipedia summation about the 2013 US Supreme Court ruling was evidence that the 2013 Supreme Court ruling only applies to foreign copyrighted works rather than all goods, while ignoring that the court explicitly explained in its ruling that the very reason why the first-sale doctrine must apply to foreign copyrighted works is because there can be no exception or exemption to the type of good which the first-sale doctrine applies to, with the judge specifically mentioning software as an example of a good which the first-sale doctrine applies to.

 

 

- They used ostentatious phrasing and repeated appeals to the authority of being a lawyer to try to suggest their argument wins by default on those grounds, despite that being a lawyer isn't a badge of credibility for a vested-interest legal argument because a lawyer is an advocate for hire and will argue and pull every trick they can to secure benefit and a win for their client's interests.

 

 

Their tactic, not as an internet troll but as a lawyer protecting their clients' interests and also their personal reputation as a paid-proponent of a certain line of argument which serves their clients' interests, was to keep making false claims about things, hoping that the other person wouldn't know the information which invalidated their claims and so would just accept the arguments as true and authoritative coming from a lawyer, so that people reading them would believe those arguments had been conceded to, and so they would be inclined to assume those arguments had validity and those people would be influenced by that going forward, effectively biasing public perception in favour of those who oppose game ownership.

 

Their many wilful disingenuous arguments shows what to be on guard for with a lawyer, and I think is a lesson to remember that a lawyer is not a purveyor of truth unless the topic they're speaking on is of no consequence to their personal practice, or if the truth is what they are being paid to argue in a particular case. A lawyer is an advocate for hire and they will bend every which way, as the one in this debate did, to argue and defend the interest of their employer. And even if they don't have a current client in the related field, if they are a lawyer who has a history of advocating for copyright holders or software publishers, or who has, themself, earned money writing EULAs, then they will consider it in their personal best interest to protect the interests of copyright holders and software publishers to the exclusion of others.

 

 

Related thread (updated February 2020): You own the software that you purchase, and any claims otherwise are urban myth or corporate propaganda

 

Edited July 23, 2020 by Delicieuxz (see edit history)

[Memox]

This video reminds me of Worms Armageddon and the fact that the developers chose the best course of action for their game: not only you can play peer-to-peer, but the actual official servers are still hosted by a few passionate players themselves. Damn, the game is receiving - after 20 years and some more - official updates from those guys! Kudos to them.

[BTGBullseye]

27 minutes ago, Memox said:

This video reminds me of Worms Armageddon and the fact that the developers chose the best course of action for their game: not only you can play peer-to-peer, but the actual official servers are still hosted by a few passionate players themselves. Damn, the game is receiving - after 20 years and some more - official updates from those guys! Kudos to them.

Team17 has always been good about maintaining their products.

[Memox]

14 minutes ago, BTGBullseye said:

Team17 has always been good about maintaining their products.

That much is for sure, I would never expect Ubisoft or EA to just give away their softwares to the users so they can host it themselves. Better to kill it, right?

By the way, I would like to thank Ross for mentioning Meridian 59 in his video. I'm so happy someone else knows this game in todays day and age.

[HUBERTfromAUSTRIA]

Hey Ross! Hey folks! 

 

Have you seen this!? LMAO!

 

Not posting this for the apple lawsuit! Go to 6:35!

In their first "meetings" with Ross, they explained "..how fraud is technically the wrong term..." etc.

Now check out their video title!

I know, its complex and Ross talked allready over the overarching theme in the last dead game news video.

But i like, how those hoeg guys now use this "technically wrong term" themselves!

Edited June 5, 2021 by HUBERTfromAUSTRIA
missing context (see edit history)

[HUBERTfromAUSTRIA]

Imagine the same suit against Steam! (compare with 13:47)

 

Some one would claime: The steam term "library" is misleading in giving the impression that i owne the stuff in it. If it was called "list of temporally licenses you purchased" and i had understood this at the moment of my "purchase", i would have never paid the money i did!

The court (under californian law...) would say: Yes, this meets the requirements for a "deceptive advertising case" ( not fraud!!!! hahahah).

Despite the eula, the plaintiff agreed on!

 

Now just fill in the "buy" button for the "library" section.....   

[hypnology]

Linus and Luke touch on this topic in yesterdays WAN show, Linus says he'd like to see releasing server software become a legal requirement if companies shut them down. (Timestamp 1:08:04 if the link doesn't take you there):

 

[kerdios]

Xbox chief of gaming says games shouldn't die
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/11/the-legal-issues-getting-in-the-way-of-legal-emulation/

 

https://www.axios.com/microsoft-old-games-preserve-emulation-748793a7-f559-4933-babf-81f34adc7cf6.html

[sirarthurhipoint]

When this video first came out, its thumbnail had Ross doing a sly winking face.  Now it's him with a cold dead stare.

 

Can Ross himself, or perhaps someone else, find this long lost thumbnail?