I remember buying fallout 4 and when the dlc came out I bought those digitally. My PS4 died so I bought another, linked my accounts etc… two years later I decided I wanted to play fallout again, so I load it up and go to download the dlc and it’s asking me to purchase them again. I check my library and they’re gone. I check my game and the files won’t load because I’m missing the dlc files.
Anyways I contacted PlayStation who said that because they have no record of me owning these on their end they can’t help. I have even the purchase emails but because they lost all the data on their end they refuse to give me my money or dlc. So yeah that’s when I realized that a digital library can just be pulled out from under you, no matter how much you spent on it.
“If buying isn’t owning then pirating isn’t stealing”
Sail the high seas for life
Good. This should have been clarified years ago, and not just in California. I’ve bought too much content that is no longer accessible. For instance, from the Wii store…
The Wii store remains my go-to example when talking to people who actually believe they own their digital purchases.
Like, Nah fam.
Which is why I will never buy a modern console. Once the company making them shutdowns the servers, the hardware will be useless. Unlike retro consoles that use physical media, which are highly sought after today.
Nintendo usually doesn’t do the right thing, but they kept the wii shop working for around 15 years after the console released, which seems reasonable enough, though for how much hosting costs they should still be offering downloads. IIRC you could store downloaded games on an SD cars so you could make a backup. Now the WiiU and 3DS, their online stuff shuttered too early. If I had bought Mariokart 8 digitally for my WiiU and wanted to redownload it, I would be unable, yet Nindendo still sells the same game on their newer switch store. The only Nintendo games I can say I own are the ones decrypted on my NAS that work with FOSS emulators.
You can still buy and play snes games. Could you imagine if the Mona Lisa was gone because 15 years was a reasonable amount of time to keep it?
tl;dr
California’s new law will require digital storefronts to clarify that consumers are buying licenses, not outright ownership of digital goods.
The law forces companies to use distinct language when selling digital media to specify license terms to avoid false advertising fines.
The law goes into effect next yea, but won’t apply to companies that offer “permanent offline downloads” of digital goods.
“permanent offline downloads”
How can anyone offer that?
It shouldn’t be that hard, gog.com manages to do it
Oh I thought they meant having the content permanently available for download, which is impossible. Thanks for the clarification!
Hit Ctrl+S and then Enter.
There, you have a permanent offline download of this comment.
Google play music used to offer it as well.
Yeah but this isn’t as big a deal as the clickbait headline.
This is actually the very first non-clickbait title I have seen all week.
How is it clickbait?