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SanAndreasX 5 hours ago
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CaptainExplosion said:
Darashiva said:

Ability to resell games is one of the biggest things missing in the digital market. If that was an option, I'd imagine a lot fewer people would have a problem with it. Obviously, the whole issue of ownership is another one. Make digital purchases actual owned copies rather than a licence you buy for the right to play a game. Those two are the big ones I see.

I thought once you pay once and download a game on Switch, Switch 2 or Xbox One you still owned it. Are they seriously going to delete somebody's downloaded games just because they were inactive for a number of years?

SanAndreasX said:

It's actually been true of almost all digital storefronts; Sony was the only one who was upfront about it. Nintendo, Microsoft, and Steam all have the exact same TOS; Steam even tells you on its checkout screen that you are only puchasing a license, not ownership of the game.

Only GOG says, "If you buy it, you own it." And the majority of its catalog are, as its name says, old games that have been largely forgotten, aside from a few exceptions like CDProjekt games from its former owner (and who knows if that will remain true now that CDP games has divested itself of GOG). And even GOG is not immune to having games delisted. 

GOG sounds ok compared to the others. When has Nintendo said that we're only purchasing a license for a game besides NSO exclusives like F-Zero 99?

Nintendo Switch End User License Agreement

As much as people complain about them, Game Key Cards are probably the closest thing to digital ownership on consoles. They are as transferrable to other people as normal cartridges, who can use them to download and play games. The original purchaser will still have the game on their system but will not be able to play it without the GKC. The only downfall is if the Nintendo eShop goes down... but 20 years later, you can still re-download the games (excuse me, licenses) you have previously bought from the Wii and DS eshops, even though those platforms have been sunsetted long since.

But still, your digital game library's fate is ultimately at the mercy of a millionaire/billionaire, whether it's Shuntaro Furukawa, Hideaki Nishino, Asha Sharma/Satya Nadella, or Gabe Newell.

The platform holders are unlikely to delete someone's game (excuse me, license) purchases from inactivity, but as an example, if you lose access to your login to access these games, then those games are lost to you. When I had a 360, I had my digital purchases tied to my Hotmail (now Live) account. Unfortunately, my password got messed up, and Microsoft does everything but require a stool sample to retrieve your account, so I was never able to reactivate it. After that happened, I made sure that the email addresses on my Nintendo, Sony, Steam, and other accounts were set to my iCloud account, not my old MS account. There's also the problem of the fact that EA has, in the past, suspended accounts of people who got moderated in EA forums, and that caused them to also get suspended from their EA Origin accounts and the games tied to them.