Thanks to a new California law, as far as I understand, Steam is now required to present the games for sale as a license purchase in California. Instead of having it say, you are buying the game. Now, this is not news to me, considering the games you buy on Steam, and other digital stores are firmly locked to your account. Meaning you have no ownership over the product, with no means to sell it to someone else.
The only good part of this, is that we now have it in black and white – that you, do not in fact own the games you buy. Something to consider perhaps, if you care about ownership at all. What I don’t really understand about this, and you call me an ignoramus if you want – but why the hesitation of making a buy come with ownership? Is it because of some legal reason? If you switch from licensing to ownership, are you forced to open up for second-hand sales? I don’t really know, but I’m curious. GOG states that you own the games you buy. However, I don’t see how you can sell those products to someone else either, aka transferring ownership. Yet, you can download an installation file and give it to someone else on a disc for example, meaning that you do seem to own the product in some ways.
This whole thing is weird, and I’m not on some crusade against Steam. I just want things to be clear, and I want gamers to feel their purchase to actually mean something.
Thanks for reading.
/Thomas
Tom's Gaming Vault 
Only actual ownership is by sailing the seven seas. If you want to be “ethical”, you can buy a game license and then give yourself free reins to torrent in perpetuity. I’ve been scammed by plenty of games and I still regret spending (full-price) money on RDR2, shitty indie games like The Forest or Zero Hour, to mention a few.
One game I played without spending money is Alan Wake 2. I’m SO glad I didn’t buy it. I begrudgingly dragged my ass through maybe 40% of that game over a year-long period and I just had to give it up. It was just so boring. Though it pushed me to finally play Control and I really liked that game, so I might be actually buying Control 2 when it comes out, as a way to pay back the devs.
Sometimes you can even feel betrayed by games you spent money on. Take Rainbow Six: Siege. I was so happy to give them my money. Then they started the GaaS model and I just felt like a dumbass. Why did I give these people my money.
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Yeah, that happened to me plenty, but if I buy a game on Steam nowadays, I keep a close watch on the two-hour cut-off point. AAA-gaming overall seems to have dropped the ball.
I also found Alan Wake 2 to be boring. The most baffling thing in that game must have been the Saga headspace thing. It had zero gameplay, but it looked great. Kinda how AAA-games work nowadays 😛
Control was pretty fun, yes. I’m not sure Remedy got it in them to produce a great sequel. We will see.
Yeah, the sudden switch in Rainbow Six: Siege must have sucked. Started as a pretty realistic shooter, to the clown show that it is now. I saw something about them adding a wheelchair bound operative, lol.
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