Digital ownership sucks, especially as we move into a place in which time frames are getting longer between the release dates of video games. Even if it doesn’t affect me directly, I don’t love it.
Today’s topic once again comes from my research, a particular thing that gets me thinking about the bigger picture of something in gaming. I would hate to become a writer that posts daily “How to get x in y game” articles with tiny updates, so I attempt to tackle bigger themes that stem from current events. It was that mindset that lead me to seeing this article about Ubisoft’s “The Crew” being shut down. I remember finding and sending the article to my friend and saying, in confidence, “I know what my next article is about.”
(also, I will now be doing my best to link things now that I set up a system. I’ll be going back through the older articles and putting links in. I said I couldn’t use any work I did before April, but I never said I couldn’t go back and edit things. Still within the rules of my challenge!)
Polygon’s Nicole Carpenter does a great work covering the issue in this and her previous article—in short, “The Crew” was a live service racing game released by Ubisoft in December 2014, and they made the move to shut the servers down and render the game unplayable in 2024 due to it having no offline mode. Even with a refund to recent buyers, it still left a lot of people losing a game that they paid for. A lawsuit was filed against Ubisoft, and more recently had a response from Ubisoft who doubled down on their decision by attempting to dismiss the case. According to Ubisoft, the players were rightfully warned that their purchase was solely a borrowing of the software.
It’s here that we come to a major issue with online gaming—the way in which we interact with games and software is a form of ownership that isn’t related to a car or bed, but instead is more akin to renting or loaning. Games are given out as software that you don’t have the rights to but are able to use within the intended form. This is why code can be obfuscated and modifications such as cheats are a breach of the terms of service—by playing these games and using these products, you have to follow a set of rules that is associated.
All of the things illustrated above are reasonable and fair to a certain extent—without some of the outlined features, a game’s code and design can be stolen or abused in ways that are unfair to creators. In that same way, it allows for a strict ruling against modification that is actively against the spirit or competitive nature of a game. If you were to own a game in the same way you owned a car, certain concepts such as reselling it as an online software that is theoretically infinite would be problematic for the industry.
I write these because I want to be able to contrast them with the issues that are additionally provided through digital ownership. Apart from the above example of the recent moves that have occurred with Ubisoft, there’s the eerie note that your steam account is not an “inheritable” object. Digital ownership is complex and leaves us with a lot of cases of unfair practices that will likely need to be reconsidered as we move into the future. With the restriction of modifications also comes the reasonable complaints around mods, especially ones for accessibility or improving framerate and rendering that don’t impede any part of the original game but are still restricted by the need to protect the digital rights of the game. The terms of service of every online game leaves us tied on what we can and cannot do, even if we may disagree.
The issue is incredibly complicated when we also refer to the willingness of gamers to accept this level of ownership. With systems like Xbox GamePass as of recent that allow for the more open renting of games, some people even trade off their level of ownership of a product in order to spend less money on games. These systems are like renting or borrowing games from friends, but I’m sure a lot of us have had reservations about the feelings of doing these things with personal possessions in the past. The difference between owning something and using something is apparent, and contextualizing gaming with it won’t be the most fun feeling in the world.
Even though the issues don’t always become serious problems for me, I recognize the pain it inflicts at times. As a Destiny 2 player, I was caught up in the swarm of anger that arose from the Destiny Content Vault and their sunsetting of old content. The fight of losing previous content that was purchased with the intent of using it without a consideration for the tiny fine print sucks because, in theory, we all read and understand that the terms of service explains to us that we don’t have the power we would normally have with something like a car or bed. And as time goes forwards and we create bigger gaps between the starting of live service games that will eventually go defunct, the industry has to come to a proper conclusion of how they’re going to move forward in order to provide trust in the ways that corporations care for their consumers.
So if you’re enjoying a niche online game you’ve had since you were young, hold onto it. You might not get another chance.