A digital-only game based on licensed content is doomed to die right from the outset. At some point, months or years from now, that licensing agreement will expire - at which point the publisher can no longer sell the game. It will be summarily pulled from digital storefronts - sometimes with little or no warning - and is unlikely to ever resurface, unless the publisher is willing to negotiate those licensing deals all over again.Last December, a slew of Transformers games were suddenly removed from Steam and PSN (and later from the Xbox Marketplace) with no warning from publisher Activision. Among them was Transformers: Devastation by renowned developer PlatinumGames, which had only been released two years previously. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Marvel titles published by Activision have suffered a similar fate.Players who have previously bought and downloaded such games can still download them again. But even this exception may not apply forever. The fact is that you do not actually own games that you download. The PSN Terms of Service explicitly state this: "When you purchase a Product you agree that you are purchasing a licence to use that Product and you do not take ownership of the Product." Microsoft and Nintendo have similar terms. By buying a digital game, you are simply buying a license to play it - and the platform holder has the right to revoke that license at any time. If, for example, Sony decided at some far point in the future to delist all of the PS3 titles from PSN, they would be perfectly entitled to do so. I'm not suggesting that they will - they may very well keep the servers open until the end of the time - but there is nothing to stop them from doing so. Read more…
source: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2018-01-21-where-do-downloadable-games-go-when-they-die
date: Tue, 23 Jan 2018 08:28:00 +0000
Comments
Post a Comment