Ever had a service take away a game?

[Drathnoxis]

No, because I only buy physical copies of games.

Even physical games these days "phone home" and if there is no home, the game may not work.

Worse recent case: "Quantum Break" It has a ton of cut scenes that supposedly are streamed onto your computer even if you have a physical copy. When the streaming source shuts down, I'm pretty sure the game will die. It's a rental.

Last physical copy of a game I had that died was "Games for Windows" Bioshock 2.

Oh, I never even thought to count physical copies of PC games as "physical". I don't buy PC at all.

 

[gorfias]

Oh, I never even thought to count physical copies of PC games as "physical". I don't buy PC at all.

Had I bought Hardline physically for the Xbox One, I'd likely still be able to play it. Consoles offer a different set of conundrums.

If you buy physical copies, you put wear and tear on your disc drive, could physically damage the ROM and you have to go through the "hassle" (OK, I"m lazy and it really isn't a huge hassle) of swapping games when if you had a ton loaded digitally, you can switch easily, which I do in particular to change genres. Fantasy RPG to racers to FPS etc.

I hope you never encounter a loss. Very aggravating.

 

[Petromir]

They're enforceable to a point. For instance, now that Battlefield doesn't work anymore, they likely successfully rely on something in the agreement that states changes may effect whether I can play the thing or not. A reasonable person standard is typically enforced. If not, we'd all end up like Kyle in that South Park episode about the Icentapad. If you haven't seen it, I recommend it.

That because something happened that most people don't seem to realise happened. Companies stopped selling games, and instead started selling 'licenses'. Any purely digital game you have is no longer yours. They turned it into a glorified version of you renting that game from them for the full price of buying a game. You bought a license to play the game, not the game itself.

In other words, because of this they're within their right to cancel the game at any point of their choosing. And I'm still not sure why the general consumer base just accepted this without problems. It started when steam was introduced, and you were forced to have it to play valves games back then. And I was HUGELY resistant to it, even refusing to buy games that were steam only for a while. It's why I'm personally EXTREMELY careful about what game I do or don't 'buy' these days. Nosgoth, an F2P game, is an example like that. I loved it for quite a while because of it's theme and a-symmetrical multiplayer, and thought about buying some stuff for it a few times. But I resisted, and I'm glad I did. As the game is completely gone now.

That's pretty much always been true, having a physical disk didn't stop what legally you buying technically being the license. The change with digital was that transferring a license became harder (often in practical terms impossible).