Essentially, the new law will mean that storefronts like Steam will no longer be able to use terms such as “buy” or “purchase” when advertising a game that always requires an online connection. Since you won’t technically own the product and servers being taken offline would render the product useless, a different word will have to be used.
The official phrasing in the bill’s summary reads, it will “prohibit a seller of a digital good from advertising or offering for sale a digital good, as defined, to a purchaser with the terms buy, purchase, or any other term which a reasonable person would understand.”
That’s actually a very good reason IMO.
I’m waiting for something like this since forever. I hope other states and countries will follow. This is huge.
It’s not only steam, but also Amazon, Apple, you name it.
Buy means buy, not “rent until we decide to render your product useless”!
Can’t wait to see what marketing BS replaces it.
My money is on Experience!
Or Activate!
Or Join!
Or Unlock!
You know something with an exclamation mark.
“Add to your library” is my guess.
To long and no explanation mark, it would never work.
Hopefully “license”, since that’s what it actually is
I don’t see why there’s a distinction for always online games. You don’t “own” any game you buy off steam. All you get is a license to play the game off steam. You can’t sell or trade them.
Support GOG! Fuck DRM! Own your shit!
Even if you buy a DVD, the only thing you are “buying” is the physical media and a license to operate the softwate. You don’t own the software stored on the media, you must use it in accordance with the license agreement or potentially face legal action. The main thing about digital storefronts is that it’s easier to revoke the license.
If you buy a movie, you are buying the rights to private use of the movie, you aren’t buying the copyright. You can sell a DVD movie to someone else and it’s not illegal and doesn’t subject you to copyright law.
If you buy a game that has a license key, then yeah, you are buying a license to the game even if it has physical media, but buying a physical copy of an Xbox game doesn’t have a license key (well, more recently they do, the box contains a store key instead of a disc, but before that was common practice)
Wait so if a game doesn’t not need online connection it can say buy?
That is such a huuuge advantage to indie devs that can let you own things.
No, it’s not just about DRM, currently the storefronts do not guarantee continued access to the content.
For example, Valve can just close your Steam account at their discretion and you would no longer be able to log in or download any of your games
Not exactly accurate. The button can still say Buy. The law says that they have to get extra acknowledgment from the buyer that they actually mean license. So it will say buy, and then it will pop up and say you aren’t buying the game, only a license, and then you have to click ok I understand. More nags. What we really need is another license agreement to pop up that nobody reads.
The EULA is a wall of text that means nothing to most people, just like the TOS. The CLA (California License Agreement) or whatever this will be called with be no different, unless they specifically demand a very short and to the point.
*"You are buying a game licence that can legally be revoked without providing a refund.
Ubisoft can revoke the game license at any time for any reason.
Ubisoft guarantees access to the license for 0 days."*
I have no expectation that it will be that clear and concise.
Edit: Looks like they have chosen not to discuss the language of the “clear expansion” at all. Likely because whoever wrote the law didn’t know the subject they’re regulating.
From the article:
The official phrasing in the bill’s summary reads, it will “prohibit a seller of a digital good from advertising or offering for sale a digital good, as defined, to a purchaser with the terms buy, purchase, or any other term which a reasonable person would understand.”
Alternatively, storefronts can clearly explain that you’re buying a license and that your purchase isn’t a permanent transaction, meaning the license can be revoked at any time by the issuer. The most important part of the bill states that passing it will be “ensuring that consumers have a full understanding of exactly what they have bought.”
It’ll probably be a wall of text like maybe a big fat paragraph and a little vague line at the bottom, or somehow manage to be short but still vague enough to not discourage sales while just barely straddling the line of being acceptable to the Californians who might one day end up bothering to look at how this ends up going, if they don’t forget to.
I was alarmed most by part B:
(B)The seller provides to the consumer before executing each transaction a clear and conspicuous statement that does both of the following:
(i)States in plain language that buying or purchasing the digital good is a license.
(ii)Includes a hyperlink, QR code, or similar method to access the terms and conditions that provide full details on the license.
The way I’m reading that it’s just going to say something like: “Attention, you access to this game which can be revoked or abandoned at any time. For more information follow this link and read the license. Press here to continue your purchase.” Nobody will read it.
If you change what it is called, you dont have to change whats wrong with it.
True but the point is honesty here… people should know they are not buying. if they chose to license, that’s on them. at some point, people need to make decisions as long as they are not lied to, they have to own them.
A while back I was discussing Ross Scott’s ‘Stop Killing Games’ proposal in the EU, in some other lemmy thread.
If passed, that law would make it so you cannot make and sell a game that becomes unplayable after a person buys the game, or you have to refund the purchase of the game itself as well as all ingame purchases.
If gameplay itself is dependant on online servers, the game has to release a working version of the server code so it at least could be run by fans, or be refunded.
If it uses some kind of DRM that no longer works, it has to be stripped of this, or properly refunded.
Someone popped in and said ‘well I think they should just make it more obvious that you’re not buying a game, you’re buying a temporary license.’
To which I said something like ‘But all that does is highlight the problem without actually changing the situation.’
So, here we are with the American version of consumer protection: We’re not actually doing any kind of regulation that would actually prevent the problem, we’re just requiring some wordplay and allowing the problem to exist and proliferate.
All this does is make it so you can’t say ‘Buy’ or ‘Purchase’ and probably have a red box somewhere that says something like ‘You are acquiring a TEMPORARY license that may be revoked at any time for any reason.’
US gets a new content warning. EU is working toward actually stopping the bullshit.
EDIT: A few days after I posted this, Ross put out a video with more or less the same angle as I presented, that this solves nothing, changes nothing, and arguably actually makes it technically worse as this functionally acts as the government officially endorsing the status quo: You have no legal standing to contest your evaporating game, as it followed the rules and put a warning or changed some wording.
“Subscribe”
“Rent”
The rise of the “acquire” button.
“Get”
“Install”
