Sony, Ubisoft scandals lead to California ban on deceptive digital goods sales

239 pointsposted 13 hours ago
by BuildWithMason
(arstechnica.com)

94 Comments

kstrauser

11 hours ago

This is excellent news! Remember, if you buy a copy of a good, you’re entitled to enjoy it as long as you wish to. If the seller steals it back from you, it’s ethical to acquire a replacement copy.

The law may say differently, but you cannot convince me that I don’t own something I bought through a “buy” button. I’ve never seen a book or movie or game or album where the button says “License” instead of “Buy”.

alehlopeh

2 hours ago

You’re asking me to remember something that you explicitly state is your personal opinion?

s0ss

2 hours ago

Rather, he’s saying if someone sold something to you, you get to use it. I don’t think any further analysis of this comment will yield anything more.

Money can be exchanged for goods and services. (And licenses, but don’t obscure that point in the fine print.)

montagg

11 hours ago

"Unlock."

kstrauser

10 hours ago

At least that implies that the good is capable of being locked. “Buy” says that I’m buying the thing.

boltzmann-brain

10 hours ago

Indeed, the idea of ownership is a basic natural concept that lawyers are trying to erase with newspeak and nonsensical hidden terms. It's a concept that's been unchanged for millions of years, even before humans existed. If you disagree with me, try taking a bone away from a dog chewing on it. It even goes back to single-cell organisms: even the mitochondrium is just [a cell owned by another cell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbiogenesis).

dietr1ch

8 hours ago

And can you sell it afterwards?

ozgrakkurt

8 hours ago

You should be able to if it is being advertised as “buy”. They should just say gain access to use it or something like that if they are not really selling anything.

2Gkashmiri

2 hours ago

case in point amazon kindle and "buy"

7e

2 hours ago

When you “buy” a concert ticket, are you buying the artist? The venue? The rights to the song?

When you click the button labeled “Buy”, you buy a license. You’re not buying the source code, or the company that makes the game, or the copyright, or the website.

Almost all words in language have more than one meaning depending on context. Except maybe to you.

kstrauser

29 minutes ago

If I go to an online store and buy a paperback, they will mail me a copy of it that I may keep for the rest of my life. I can read it 100 times if I want to.

Before this law, I could go through that exact process to get a e-book, but then they could come back later and revoke my ability to read the e-book that I “bought”.

Those two cannot use the same word. They are not the same class of transaction. The latter is more like a rental or lease. They both live behind a “buy” button, though.

If I’m told I’m buying an e-book, and the seller later steals it from me by making it unreadable, I have no qualms about obtaining a replacement copy through other channels. I already paid for it; I’m going to have and enjoy it.

Larrikin

2 hours ago

You are buying an experience on that night. Similar to buying food at a restaurant

You aren't buying a bad faith argument.

philistine

11 minutes ago

No, you're literally buying an entry ticket. If you were buying an experience, you could sue because the beer was not to your taste.

HeuristicsCG

9 hours ago

But you bought a license to use the game. If you had truly bought the game you would be within your legal right to resell it (via copying to 100 people), which you are not.

jjk166

2 hours ago

If I buy a book, that does not give me the right to print 100 copies of the book and sell them. Indeed if I buy a lawnmower, that does not give me the right to make 100 identical copies and sell them. The right to manufacture something is not a fundamental part of purchasing an individual item.

npteljes

6 hours ago

>If you had truly bought the game

I think this is the point. We want to truly buy with a Buy action, and license or subscribe with License and Subscribe actions. I'm sure people would be mad even if a Licensed or Subscribed item would cease to work, but it's more honest, than saying that someone Bought something.

jonhohle

9 hours ago

You bought one license to the game which should be resellable exactly once by the purchaser.

baq

9 hours ago

I like the distinction - pirating isn't stealing, licensing isn't buying. Clear and concise.

jchw

9 hours ago

In the physical world you buy physical copies of things. Certainly in the digital world, you could buy digital copies.

nkrisc

6 hours ago

Just like when you buy a book you’re allowed to photocopy it and sell the copies?

mystified5016

2 hours ago

No, like when you buy a book and the vendor isn't allowed to come into your house and take it away from you with no refund and no recourse.

Creating a copy is violation of copyright. Owning a book, reading it, then reselling the copy you own is not.

'Buying' digital goods nowadays means the vendor can take the goods away from you at any time, for any reason, with zero compensation, and absolutely no possible way to recover said goods.

HeuristicsCG

5 hours ago

Buying a book means buying the paper the book is printed on, the intellectual content (text) is not bought. You are allowed to resell the paper. And you are in fact not buying a license to use a book when you buy a book, you are literally buying the actual physical book.

jjk166

2 hours ago

If you were buying the paper, then two books of the same page count (even if those pages were blank) would be the same price and interchangeable. They are not. Likewise if you were paying for the paper, then a book with no paper, such as an audiobook, would be free. Again it is not. You are buying some form of media that contains the intellectual content.

boltzmann-brain

7 hours ago

that's like saying if you bought a title to a bridge you would be within your legal right to resell it (via copying the title 100 times with a photo copier).

it's all just whatever people agree upon is the correct thing to do, and people don't agree that what you're saying is the correct thing to do.

HeatrayEnjoyer

4 hours ago

>people don't agree that what you're saying is the correct thing to do.

Other than the current written law (which is very, very, influenced by corporate lobbyists), how are you coming to this conclusion?

boltzmann-brain

3 hours ago

i wasn't talking about written law, i was talking about what people agree with. the law is something separate from that.

Daiz

7 hours ago

Extremely welcome legislation, especially since it has an exception for "permanent download that can be accessed offline", ie. DRM-free downloads. It's about time someone actually calls out Big Media on their deceptive practices. As I've been saying for years, it's not "buying" with DRM-encumbered media, merely "renting for an undefined time period".

In fact, it'd be even nicer if the legislation explicitly required rental terminology to be used for anything DRM-encumbered, but well, even as-is, this is an extremely welcome development and I hope legislators worldwide are taking note and plan to follow suit as soon as possible. This kind of victory for digital consumer rights has been long overdue!

throwaway48476

3 hours ago

It's easier to get a 2.0 law passed as the effects are more well understood.

Sniffnoy

12 hours ago

Hm, wonder if the Stop Killing Games campaign (https://www.stopkillinggames.com/) will be able to make use of this, like they're trying to make use of consumer protection law in France...

tifik

3 hours ago

Wow, signing that petition was shockingky smooth with my national e-ID. I thought it was just a random petition site, but its an official EU system that verifies your identity. And it just worked with the ID app I have installed. Nice.

boltzmann-brain

11 hours ago

SKG organizer here. Something like this CA legislation was our "worst case scenario, everything else failed, at least we could do this much, we've compromised on everything" goal.

That is to say, now opponents can't push us to compromise to that level and our worst case scenario in case we pass anything at all is looking better.

We're really happy this is happening because it changes the Overton window for us and makes our case stronger and easier to argue for, as you say.

A lot of change has been happening in the past few months and even weeks with regards to the market and legislative situation around the problematic of SKG and while you can't ever fully attribute something, we hope that it's thanks to our actions. Ubisoft promising end of life offline modes for The Crew 2 and the third game in the series called Motorfest. Capcom bringing back Windows 7 era games that were lost to G4WL.

The "Ubisoft scandal" mentioned in the headline - specifically the unforced shutdown and resulting removal of functioning state from The Crew - is something that SKG have no doubt popularized. Now that we're at 350 000 signatures of a goal of 1 000 000 in our direct democracy initiative, companies and lawmakers are starting to take things seriously. And this is with a $0 budget. We're still in need of more signatures over the next 10 months to reach the goal, so if you're an EU citizen, go click the link Sniffnoy posted above and sign. Worth doing even if you're not a gamer, just to claw back some ownership rights from corporations worth billions of dollars, spreading out to all corners of technology, not just games.

If you want a very short exposition of what Stop Killing Games is, here's a ~1 minute video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHGfqef-IqQ

If you want a good, exhaustive intro to what SKG is about, this interview between a game developer and two SKG organizers is worth watching:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnpFqPGrgDk

Ross Scott is best known for his youtube series "Freeman's Mind" where he plays Half-Life and narrates what Gordon Freeman must be thinking, with a lot of deeply philosophical considerations. It's a staple of YouTube. He's also been running a series called "Dead Game News" and that's how Stop Killing Games was born.

The other organizer, Damian, is a real-deal neckbeard dev and has pretty much done it all from BASIC on 8-bit micros to theorem provers and from video games to cryptography audits.

Here's the original intro to Stop Killing Games by Ross: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w70Xc9CStoE

And here's a subsequent FAQ: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEVBiN5SKuA

If anyone has questions about SKG, I'll be checking the replies now and then.

ewuhic

2 hours ago

Does it work for citizens only, or legal residence also applies?

Btw, I'm not sure you should show a cookie banner if you're not tracking people. But you must be more knowledgeable than me.

boltzmann-brain

2 hours ago

Citizens only, and anywhere in the world. If you're not a citizen but are a resident, you can support in another way - go to your friends who are EU citizens and ask them to sign! Even if they're not gamers, remember that it's about ownership in general. There are many other things that can and are being remotely shut down, such as cars, trains, implants for disabled people, etc. This is just the first step in regaining ownership of things you buy. Try asking a few people for support!

squigz

10 hours ago

Thanks for the work you and others at SKG are doing o7

boltzmann-brain

10 hours ago

you're welcome - if you want to thank us, convince one EU citizen to sign the initiative!

squigz

10 hours ago

I will do that while making sad Canadian sounds :P

Also, might I recommend adding embed information to the website so linking it on i.e., Discord shows some information?

boltzmann-brain

10 hours ago

Thank you!

Regarding embed information, that's a great idea and I'll pass it on.

Negitivefrags

4 hours ago

I can’t view a video at the moment, so I apologise if this has been answered in that.

If the server software a game uses requires a licence to a third party library, what is the developer expected to do about that?

boltzmann-brain

3 hours ago

If the EU decides to build any legislation around SKG, they will give developers ample warning before things go into effect. Apple had years to prepare for USB C. This is still years out. So the answer is: negotiate compatible terms, or don't use the third party library.

This is merely an issue to begin with for companies that are absolutely massive, like Sony or Activision. Smaller developers just don't do stuff like that in general: you download the game and then you have the game.

Since the ask is for a reasonably working game, maybe as a developer in that position you can just cut out the functionality that depends on the library or replace the library with something similar or mock it out or use a static cache of request vs response for all possible requests. The technological possibilities are endless.

It's not like as developers we're these helpless infants who have never solved a problem in our lives. It's a tech problem, tech a solution to it, that's why you're a professional and not bush league.

Ultimately if someone can't figure out how to do their business without scamming people out of ownership then that's a skill issue. If they're not creative enough to figure it out, the business is doomed to begin with. Legislation often has the additional positive effect of ridding the market of people who shouldn't be there to begin with, like food trucks infested with cockroaches and pizza places that use fake cheese.

maccard

2 hours ago

> It's a tech problem, tech a solution to it,

Except it's not - it's a business problem. SKG would essentially ban the use of Oracle as an example. Or it would likely kill games like Rock band which have licensed audio. You might be ok with that, but why are your preferences more important than mine.

> This is merely an issue to begin with for companies that are absolutely massive, like Sony or Activision. Smaller developers just don't do stuff like that in general

This is a naive viewpoint IMO. Another way of looking at it is that only large companies will be able to conform and this will squeeze out the possibility of small developers having multiplayer games. This sort of red-tape stifles innovation.

FroshKiller

2 hours ago

Small developers have multiplayer games all the time that aren't affected by issues like the ones SKG is concerned with. Ad-hoc multiplayer and dedicated servers that players can self-host are long-established solutions. A common argument in bad faith is that SKG demands perpetual upkeep of presumed infrastructure that will somehow harm small developers, and it just isn't true.

boltzmann-brain

an hour ago

To be fair they didn't make that argument, but thanks for the support none the less! Agreed, ad-hoc servers are a staple and a worked out problem. 99% of the time you have to go out of your way as a developer to make things not work in this way.

boltzmann-brain

2 hours ago

> Except it's not - it's a business problem. SKG would essentially ban the use of Oracle as an example

why are you using Oracle for video games? what's wrong with you?

> Or it would likely kill games like Rock band which have licensed audio.

Rock Band DOES work offline. Licensed audio in Rock Band is licensed in such a way that once a copy is sold the license allows the use of that copy in perpetuity. 100 years from now I'll still be able to pop in my Rock Band disc and play it, because that's how ownership works and the developer didn't get in the way of my ownership of my own property.

But when I said "It's a tech problem" I was answering someone who mentioned a tech problem.

Coming up with a different, non-tech problem as a counter-point to a whole discussion exclusively about a tech problem is not as smart as you think it is, and the examples you bring up aren't very good at all.

> Another way of looking at it is that only large companies will be able to conform

No, that's unmitigated nonsense. Just your first paragraph showed you have no idea what you're talking about, but now you're just stringing words together. The reason why only the largest companies can have these problems in the first place is because of their legacy technology integrations and pre-existing technology supplier agreements which they would have to re-negotiate. Remember, this is a scenario AFTER the initiative gets a million signatures, which is a year out, and AFTER the EU has legislated, which is another year at least, and AFTER the warning period which is several years. Even with the fastest possible timeline it's probably like 5 years of warning that things are going to change. And at that point anyone entering the space from the bottom as a new player is free to negotiate a deal which conforms with the market regulations going forward; if the technology suppliers don't want to negotiate realistic terms, they go out of business. While we're at it, large companies are also free to renegotiate their contracts to make them legal in the eyes of the legislation because contract survival terms are a standard staple in any technology supply agreement and if changes to market regulations make a contract unfit or illegal then renegotiations commence as a matter of course. But given the timeline of this going into effect they'll have renegotiated YEARS ahead of the deadlines.

This isn't a twitter poll. It's not going to go into effect 5 minutes after it's been posted. There will be AMPLE time for everyone to figure stuff out and change their paperwork, and the only companies really affected are the ones that already spend $1M+/year on legal anyways.

maccard

an hour ago

> why are you using Oracle for video games? what's wrong with you?

Because my previous project used it. It's an example. There are plenty of others. And I think this sort of attitude is unfair towards people like me who genuinely want to preserve video games, but are concerned that an ideological battle is going to negatively affect the industry.

> Licensed audio is licensed in such a way that once a copy is sold the license allows the use of that copy in perpetuity.

Licensed audio can be licensed in such a way. GTA being a great example of something that doesn't have perpetual licenses to their music.

> Coming up with a different, non-tech problem as a counter-point to a whole discussion exclusively about a tech problem is not as smart as you think it is

> no, that's unmitigated nonsense. Just your first paragraph showed you have no idea what you're talking about, but now you're just stringing words together.

In three paragraphs, you've attacked me three times, when there's no need to have done. If you can't have civil discourse, I'm not interested in discussing this with you.

jagermo

3 hours ago

signed already and thank you all for your hard work.

boltzmann-brain

2 hours ago

Thank you for your service! If you want to support even more, feel free to talk to others about it!

szastamasta

9 hours ago

Maybe I have misunderstood the article, but for me it looks like another „cookies” law.

They are not proposing to force media companies to make sure you have access to your media forever. Or force them to give you a downloadable copy when they remove media from store. They’ll just replace „Buy” button with „Get Access” or whatever and add some lawyer mumbo-jumbo above it.

Looks like a smokescreen to me.

diggan

7 hours ago

> They’ll just replace „Buy” button with „Get Access” or whatever and add some lawyer mumbo-jumbo above it.

Sounds like exactly what is needed? Consumers currently think they're buying something when they click a button that says "Buy", when in reality they're getting temporary access to it.

Forcing companies to use clear language might change consumer behavior, or it might not, but at least it's no longer explicitly misleading.

wodenokoto

8 hours ago

> make sure you have access to your media forever.

No, they are trying to make sure that companies don't tell you something is yours that isn't.

> They’ll just replace „Buy” button with „Get Access” or whatever and add some lawyer mumbo-jumbo above it.

Forbidding that would require forbidding rentals.

ZaoLahma

4 hours ago

Mentally it's not too difficult to throw $60 at a digital "Buy" button, but it's much harder to throw those $60 at a "Get access" button. I wholly welcome a change like this, even if it's just wording on the button.

One thing to worry about, perhaps, is how it might make it easier for companies to remove things that we have "Gotten access" to as it would be explicitly stated that we don't actually buy anything.

ben-schaaf

2 hours ago

> Mentally it's not too difficult to throw $60 at a digital "Buy" button, but it's much harder to throw those $60 at a "Get access" button.

This is especially true when a large number of games do have a buy button. "Get access" stands out as not being the same as buying when you've bought the rest of your game library.

beretguy

4 hours ago

> One thing to worry about, perhaps, is how it might make it easier for companies to remove things that we have "Gotten access" to

They are already doing it. The Crew is a good example. We are not losing anything here.

ZaoLahma

3 hours ago

Yes, but up until now it's been (very) rare. At least for games.

I fear that companies will view a change like this as a door opening wider to remove digital content as they please. Or perhaps worse, only offer strictly time-limited access with a "well, you're getting exactly what you asked for" view of it.

beretguy

2 hours ago

It's not rare at all. It happens all the time, everywhere. There are hundreds of games nobody can play anymore because servers got shutdown.

dgoldstein0

8 hours ago

They'll either have to change the text in which case digital good sales will be more honest, or they won't want to change the text and therefore will actually commit to letting us download and keep our own copies without interference. Both sound like wins to me. Just TBD which variant ends up more common.

szastamasta

8 hours ago

You see, I just don’t think more honest wins us anything. I’ve seen too many „We value your privacy” popups already.

beart

3 hours ago

I think the old adage, "don't let perfect be the enemy of good" applies here. Some battles are fought one excruciating step at a time

beretguy

4 hours ago

What do you mean? What do privacy pop ups have to do with this?

szastamasta

4 hours ago

It’s just like with cookies. I believe that lawmakers were honest and really wanted for companies to limit amount of tracking in the web. What we did get instead is a lot of „we value your privacy” popups and 5 pages of checkboxes to check if you don’t want to be tracked.

I just think that this will end up the same way. Nothing really changes, but we’ll just get more useless „lawyer talk” in more and more license documents to click on.

beretguy

2 hours ago

> I just think that this will end up the same way.

What will change is that I will know not to buy games that don't have "Buy" button.

throwaway48476

3 hours ago

Instead of hidden sleaze it's now very much in your face.

nkrisc

5 hours ago

That’s the point. It’s a step in the right direction.

This law is aimed at preventing deception at point of sale. It doesn’t target business practices.

robertclaus

10 hours ago

It does feel like a lot of this enforcement will need to be in the spirit of the law and/or general deterrence. I would assume any sufficiently specific law in this space would be fairly easy to find a loophole or workaround for in your UI.

amne

10 hours ago

Like having a button that says "Rent" instead of "Buy"? That would be crazy

rlayton2

4 hours ago

Probably something like "Buy a pass to play"

beretguy

4 hours ago

Sounds good. I’ll know not to ever press that button.

Me000

2 hours ago

This is amazing, thank god people are fighting for my rights.

blackeyeblitzar

9 hours ago

Ownership always had a meaning. Selling things for purchase and then treating it as a limited license is fraud. Even under existing law. How about we hold all these companies accountable for the rug pull?

boltzmann-brain

3 hours ago

That's what Stop Killing Games is trying to do via cooperation with DGCCRF and other consumer agencies. If you like that, go to their website and learn how to support them.

pjmlp

4 hours ago

Great, hope this extends elsewhere.

riiii

8 hours ago

Imagine writing so awful and unethical software that it triggers law to be created to ban it.

givemeethekeys

11 hours ago

Do they charge / pay sales tax on in-game purchases?

boltzmann-brain

10 hours ago

the purchase of in-game items or currencies is a purchase like any other.

simoncion

12 hours ago

If I'm reading the text of the law correctly [0], this does not go nearly far enough.

(b)(2)(A) seems to say that all an entity needs to do to comply with the law is to add a checkbox associated with some text that links to the EULA for the software, and also says "By checking this box, you acknowledge that you have read the EULA and know that access to the software will be revoked if you no longer hold a right to the software".

Most folks are never going to read the EULA, and no reasonable person would expect that a button that says "BUY" would seal a deal that permits the "seller" to unilaterally revoke the customer's right to the "sold" software.

[0] <https://legiscan.com/CA/text/AB2426/id/2966792>

ccvannorman

11 hours ago

This is incorrect. Links to EULA are not enough, it must be separate and distinct from any other terms. Words like "BUY" are also expressly forbidden.

Quoted from the link in parent comment ( https://legiscan.com/CA/text/AB2426/id/2966792 )

- (1) It shall be unlawful for a person to advertise or offer for sale a digital good with the terms “buy,” “purchase,” or any other term which a reasonable person would understand to confer an unrestricted ownership interest

(B) The affirmative acknowledgment from the purchaser pursuant to subparagraph (A) shall be distinct and separate from any other terms and conditions of the transaction that the purchaser acknowledges or agrees to.

idle_zealot

11 hours ago

That's interesting. I don't for a second think this will actually curtail the harmful business practices, but what do you recon they'll write on their buttons? Maybe just dance around any meaningful verbiage with a button that just has a dollar sign or shopping cart on it? Just "Proceed" or "Confirm"?

andyferris

11 hours ago

“Get” is already used on iOS for this purpose.

tiltowait

11 hours ago

“Get” replaced “free”, because it was misleading to call apps free when most have in-app purchases.

beretguy

4 hours ago

“Get” sounds good to me. I’ll know not to get any games that have “Get” button. Hopefully this law spreads to Steam across the board so that people outside of California can also benefit from it.

vrighter

11 hours ago

"add to cart" and "checkout"

summermusic

6 hours ago

I’d argue that a reasonable person would understand these terms to confer an unrestricted ownership interest.

I’m putting this good into a metaphorical container and taking it to a metaphorical till. This implies a sort of tangibility, a property of physical goods that I’d walk out of the metaphorical store to own.

simoncion

11 hours ago

> Words like "BUY" are also expressly forbidden.

I strongly disagree.

(b)(1) says that "buy" is not permitted for these goods... EXCEPT

(b)(2)(A) says that it IS permitted, if you follow the rules in subsections i through iii.

> (2) (A) Notwithstanding paragraph (1), a person may advertise or offer for sale a digital good with the terms “buy,” “purchase,” or any other term which a reasonable person would understand to confer an unrestricted ownership interest in the digital good, or alongside an option for a time-limited rental, if the seller receives at the time of each transaction an affirmative acknowledgment from the purchaser of all of the following:

My read on that is that either (b)(1) controls and you cannot use the words "buy" and friends, OR you do the things in (b)(2) and you CAN use "buy" & etc.

My read on subsection (ii) when combined with (i) is that simply "providing" the EULA for a digital software download and making the customer tick a box saying that they've "received" the EULA would be sufficient. If it's not (and it might not be), then having them scroll through the whole EULA to "prove" that they read it would clearly be sufficient, as it's common practice.

> (B) The affirmative acknowledgment from the purchaser pursuant to subparagraph (A) shall be distinct and separate from any other terms and conditions of the transaction that the purchaser acknowledges or agrees to.

Yes, but I think that this just means that this acknowledgement is a thing that's separate from the EULA, and separate from extended warranties, and such. The language that says that the customer must acknowledge that they received the license for the thing they're "purchasing" indicates that they must be -at minimum- given a chance to read the EULA... and I'm pretty sure common practice is to either provide a link to the EULA, or force you to scroll through it.

wruza

9 hours ago

That’s so naive. They’ll just replace terminology industry-wise and continue on the wave of irony about it.

Feels like regulators never were in kindergarten or at least school, could be a freshening experience for them, cause it all works like there.

tpxl

9 hours ago

Replacing the terminology is the first step to this methinks. You'll always be able to buy a bagel, but not a video game. It's still shitty, but it's not deceptively shitty.

99112000

5 hours ago

Did they have to add a label that the goods may give them cancer?

lesuorac

an hour ago

It's weird how a smaller provision of a much larger work (Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986) are always trotted out as an argument against regulation. Like if you can't use the majority of the regulation in an argument against it, perhaps it's good regulation.

Although to the actually very narrow point raised, would you rather not know what substances were bad for you? Perhaps a lot of this is pointless as you will commonly see people saw materials without masks but at the same point would you buy carrots labeled with "This product is known to the state of CA to cause cancer?".

And to the rest of the regulation that isn't address by OP. It is very good that companies cannot just dump their cancerous waste materials into rivers.

beretguy

4 hours ago

What is this comment in relation to?

tlhunter

3 hours ago

California prop 65

beretguy

2 hours ago

And how is that related to the post?