this post was submitted on 27 Sep 2024
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A new law has been passed in California which prohibits the use of words like "buy" and "purchase" on digital storefronts like Steam. (www.pcgamesn.com)
submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 29 points 2 months ago (1 children)

There should be an exception: If they want to still say “buy” or fail to comply, they will need to refund the full original purchase price if they ever shut down the server.

Next do planned obsolescence and products that are designed to break a week after the warranty expires.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Then they would need to pay everything back they ever earned if the company ever goes bankrupt. I imagine a bankrupt company doesn't have much to pay back.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I think they’d do two things if they want to keep the buy button. 1) Not require always online connections to play, or properly remove the online requirement or convert to P2P in the case of multiplayer games if they want to end support, or 2) sell their server infrastructure to a third party.

I assume this law is to preempt demand for something similar to the EU’s “stop killing games” petition. It’s a way to say that consumers were made aware and agreed that their games are only temporary licenses, so they can’t demand refunds or continued support when the company wants to stop.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

The 2 reasons you provide are actually why games that offer an offline mode functionality (more specifically that the seller cannot revoke access to after the transaction, which includes making the digital good available at the time of purchase for permanent offline download to an external storage source to be used without a connection to the internet) are exempted from needing to follow this law.

I don't think this is a preemption of the SKG campaign but actually one of the realistic goals of that campaign. I don't think the ability to rent software for a limited time is an issue, but tricking people into thinking they can use something they purchased forever, to have it unilaterally taken away due to 3rd party licensing, decommissioning servers or other excuse is the problem.