While this article focuses on Nintendo because their shop is closing this week, it obviously will apply to Sony, Microsoft, and many others too. Anyway, I highly recommend the read - here's the link and some snippets of the article quoted below that:
LINK: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/arti ... me-history
The day Nintendo pulls the plug on the Wii Store Channel should be a strong warning to those who care about video game preservation, and any consumer who uses a digital store: We often don't truly own products we buy digitally, and when one of these digital stores go down, piracy is often the only way to preserve its history.
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In the digital era, companies increasingly pull the rug out from under products consumers may falsely assume they actually own, notes Case Western Law Professor Aaron Perzanowski, whose last book The End Of Ownership highlighted this problem extensively.
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Other consumers may simply view such behavior as unavoidable, Perzanowski said. “Unfortunately, I think consumers are starting to see these moves as inevitable,” he said. “Especially for sophisticated digital consumers, like gamers, there is a growing sense that companies are likely to abuse their authority in ways that harm consumers.”
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“Consumers need to be vocal in their objections to these sort of bait and switch tactics,” he argued. “They need to develop a longer memory and vote with their wallets. These firms rely on consumers getting over their temporary outrage.”
Thoughts?