If buying isn't owning then piracy isn't theft.
this post was submitted on 10 Apr 2025
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So I actually read the article, even though there are huge outstanding questions on the nature of ownership, that’s actually not what the court argument is about:
Replying to Ubisoft’s argument that the statute of limitations is up, the plaintiffs responded with their own photos of The Crew’s packaging, which states that the activation code for the game doesn’t expire until 2099; that’s an example of how Ubisoft “implied that [The Crew] would remain playable during this time and long thereafter,”
Well yeah… software as a service is a thing but Ubisoft is straight up lying…
My two cents: no one is expecting online services to be up forever, so imo the correct solution is open source the game after the company meets their 10 (or 20) year obligation which should be clearly pointed out during the initial rental agreement (shouldn’t call it purchase)
there are huge outstanding questions on the nature of ownership
There really aren't, though. There is only the well-established and correct understanding of it as embodied by things like the Uniform Commercial Code, and lying criminals trying to gaslight us into letting them steal our property rights.
If a company decides to stop hosting it's online service they should be required to open it up for third party hosting. By ending their support they are admitting the profit capture is over so if another company wants to host it for profit so be it.
They shouldnt be required to do anything with it. Theres no public safety issue that requires it be maintained, its just a game. You also seem to imply making money from creating a game is immoral. This whole "art" belongs to everyone thing is stupid and only hurts artists.
You should reread my comment.
I didn't imply there is a public safety issue. I didn't imply anything about morality.
If a company drops the hosting for online servers they shouldn't prevent third parties from picking it up. That's the whole statement so you don't need to find anything between the lines.
Art does belong to everyone but that's completely unrelated to my comment above.
You are implying its about server costs then? Activision sunset the crew because they had been developing the crew 2 for a long time. It had to come out eventually. Allowing third party hosting of the crew would have cost them a lot of money. Why should they take a loss in that situation?
They should take a loss because they sold a product and it's availability shouldn't be a lever they use to drive traffic to their new game. Is this where I say you are implying that corporate profits are more important than honesty?
Are you implying that they didn't insinuate that this game would be supported longer when they had an actual expiration date on the product code, 2099? If the Crew 3 has been in development for 10 years and they spend a billion dollars developing it would it be ok to sunset the Crew 2 after a couple weeks to "motivate" buyers to buy the new version? Who decides what is the "appropriate" amount of time a product should be available.
If they don't allow private or third party hosting for the Crew then anyone should be able to refund it since they bought a product that has been rugpulled.
You can feel free to ignore all of that because there isn't a good reason to support Ubisoft here and this model unless you like the taste of shoe polish.
Perhaps the real problem is the length of copyright. The direction copyright has gone is the exact opposite of the speed of technology.
Well, I stopped paying ubisoft long ago.
Certainly doesn't help that their launcher is significantly worse than even EA's. That's a feat.
Ubisoft: 'You don’t own your games.' Me: 'Cool, so when I uninstall The Crew, I’ll send you an invoice for storage fees since it’s technically YOUR property.'"
Also, The Crew was supposed to last until 2099? Bro, Ubisoft can’t even keep their servers alive for a weekend, let alone 76 years.
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I've spent well over $2k on guitars, accessories, DLC, etc, for Rocksmith 2014. For five years I've been using it to learn bass guitar, and absolutely love it.
One day Ubi is going to turn off the servers, and I am simply going to cry.
There is no alternative I'm aware of, the new version is AI garbage from what I've heard, and I enjoy the thing I have and the songs I've paid for.
If they are not going to provide an offline mode, or the server code, then I will 100% make it my mission to pirate the game and make it playable offline.
A quick search found multiple pirated versions of rocksmith, you might already be able to do the last part of your post.
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I mean... yeah, we don't. And we know it. That's kind of the whole issue. But it's obviously more nuanced or we wouldn't have a problem with the system. We kind of want ownership, or more of it. More say in what we can do with the things we buy.
Licence is a separate category from ownership. Clear distinction in marketing, sales, and operation would help a lot with these conflicts. Selling them with the same techniques, channels, and methods gives players a false sense of permanence even if they're labelled as services.
Not sure what that distinction would look like. But it should look more honest.
Honestly, that's probably where GOG fits in. They grant you a license to download the full game without DRM. I don't know if they already do this, but if a game is planned to be delisted, they could warn players and allow them to download a final copy that should work whether the listing exists or not.
In that way, you have a coexisting license and ownership of what you pay for.
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If you don't want to loose access to games and you are European you can sign the following petition https://eci.ec.europa.eu/045/public/#/screen/home . If 1 million Europeans sign that the European commission has to deal with this practice
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It wasn't like they were gonna go "oh sorry, our bad, have your game back".
I would be more open to the “you don’t actually own your games” thing if I wasn’t being sold a digital thing that will definitely get pulled out of my hands at some point, for more than the cost of the physical copies we used to get ($70 minimum now, vs $40-50). And even in the case of The Crew, you got fucked regardless of having a physical copy or not.
I pay for GamePass knowing that I don’t own the games on there. It’s a subscription just like the Sega Channel was.
Online services going away is fine. That’s been a thing that’s happened for years with other games. But the game should still remain playable in some fashion. If it becomes fully inaccessible at the end of life, customers have a legitimate reason to be upset.
Online services going away is fine. That’s been a thing that’s happened for years with other games. But the game should still remain playable in some fashion. If it becomes fully inaccessible at the end of life, customers have a legitimate reason to be upset.
It's not even just that. Society at large has an even more legitimate reason to be upset, because the whole social contract by which we agreed to even grant the publisher copyright in the first place was predicated on the work eventually entering the Public Domain. Destroying the work to prevent that from happening is more truly "theft" than "pirating" copies of it could ever be!
The server component of online games ought to be required by law to be submitted to the Library of Congress for eventual release to the public.
Won't it still eventually go into public domain whether the servers are running or not? Then any company would be free to remake the game or use the IP?
No, because the server-side code would never be published in the first place. It's entirely possible every copy could just end up deleted once they shut the servers off. It can't be in the public domain if it no longer exists.
Well right now it no longer exists and its not in the public domain so noone is allowed to recreate it. Once it enters public domain, it will be legal to recreate it. I don't think its on the company to prop up everyone else after they no longer have ownership of the IP. Servers have been reverse engineered before, and in WoW classics case, they brought in the indie devs who were doing it to help them recreate the game again for real.
so noone is allowed to recreate it
Arguably that's not true, as doing stuff for the purpose of interoperability is fair use.
I don't think its on the company to prop up everyone else after they no longer have ownership of the IP.
This is a perfect illustration of how toxic it is to let the copyright cartel frame the debate with loaded language like "ownership" of "IP." FYI, "IP" is not actually a thing and ideas are fundamentally different from property and cannot be "owned".
relevant paragraph
It has been pretended by some (and in England especially) that inventors have a natural and exclusive right to their inventions; & not merely for their own lives, but inheritable to their heirs. but while it is a moot question whether the origin of any kind of property is derived from nature at all, it would be singular to admit a natural, and even an hereditary right to inventions. it is agreed by those who have seriously considered the subject, that no individual has, of natural right, a separate property in an acre of land, for instance. by an universal law indeed, whatever, whether fixed or moveable, belongs to all men equally and in common, is the property, for the moment, of him who occupies it; but when he relinquishes the occupation the property goes with it. stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. it would be curious then if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. if nature has made any one thing less susceptible, than all others, of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an Idea; which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the reciever cannot dispossess himself of it. it’s peculiar character too is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. he who recieves an idea from me, recieves instruction himself, without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, recieves light without darkening me. that ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benvolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point; and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement, or exclusive appropriation. inventions then cannot in nature be a subject of property. society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility. but this may, or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from any body. accordingly it is a fact, as far as I am informed, that England was, until we copied her, the only country on earth which ever by a general law, gave a legal right to the exclusive use of an idea. in some other countries, it is sometimes done, in a great case, and by a special & personal4 act. but generally speaking, other nations have thought that these monopolies produce more embarrasment than advantage to society. and it may be observed that the nations which refuse monopolies of invention, are as fruitful as England in new and useful devices.
In other words, copyright is a privilege, and there is absolutely no reason we shouldn't expect those granted that monopoly to "property up everyone else" in exchange for receiving that privilege.
Its not a privilege, its a protection for artists. There is nothing that says they have any responsibilities to their work after the copyright expires. I'm not sure where you got this privilege thing from.
It will be available in the public domain once the copyright expires, in the case of the crew.
Feel free to make another racing MMO and call it whatever you'd like though.
In the United States, copyright exists for the sole and express purpose "to promote the progress of science and the useful arts." (US Constitution, article 1, section 8, clause 8). Protecting artists has nothing whatsoever to do with it; the monopoly privilege is given only as a means to the end of enriching the Public Domain.
Its literally a protection for those who create art or science. You are arguing what you think the spirit of the law is vs. what it functionally does. The purpose of a system is what it does.
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