• nfh@lemmy.world
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    15 hours ago

    I don’t think most people’s sense of “ownership” of a copy of a game has anything to do with whether or not they’ve legally bought a license.

    For most of my collection, I own a physical thing, that represents the ability to play that game, using hardware I bought, whether I bought those things today, last year, or even a decade ago. Some of my games are digital, but I still have possession of a copy I bought, and can play it whenever I want. I paid money for the right to play a game when I want, and that’s a notion of ownership.

    If someone can take it away from me, that isn’t aligned with my notion of ownership, and also isn’t worth spending money on imo. I own some GameCube games, and yes, technically that means I have a license, but they still work physically and legally. There’s nothing to enforce against me.

    The thing that changed is the ability to revoke that license. And that amounts to a different concept than ownership. One not worth paying for.