| aLkaLiNE said: All of this will inevitably be a thing of the past with DRM and a digital only future moving forward. When you physically buy a game, you are buying the license to use, modify or back up that file. Obviously you cannot redistribute. When you are buying a game digitally, you are essentially leasing that file indefinitely but do not have the right to copy or modify that file. This is what digital rights management is all about, and we're seeing physical games start to incorporate DRM through an always online environment. It is completely legal to download an open source emulator from the internet, and play copies of games you personally purchased and backed up yourself, provided the format was physical. DRM is a different can of worms and applies to software acquired digitally, but again adheres to its own subset of copyright law. It's much less consumer friendly but also the future. |
It's a shame it's headed that way. It was inevitable in the battle against piracy, online authentification and (temporary) software licenses are the only tools the industry has, when enforcing copyright is just too much trouble.
I did my part in helping the industry along from friendly "enter word 6 on page 17" to needing unlock keys which transformed into online drm and making physical pc games pretty much worthless :/ MS almost had its way with online authentification with XBox One. It will happen eventually anyway.
