It's a non-transferable lease that can be canceled at any time by the issuer.

The real problem is that most of society still thinks of games as a piece of physical media that you combine with a player that allows you to play the game. In that world you have a liscense to the software, and a physical token which is transferable and therefore valuable.

I'd argue that we need to decouple transferability and cancel ability from physical media. If this were to happen then the word "Buy" makes sense precisely the same way it used to with physical media. Of course more provision needs to be provided for live service games regarding cancel ability.

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stetrain 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Yes, some people are trying to achieve this by arguing that physical media should stick around forever. I think the real solution is providing the same protections and rights for digital purchases as we had with physical media.

That would be a real win for consumers since we get the advantages of digital media with the ownership and transference rights of physical media.

Of course this would be a great inconvenience to those who wish to charge the same price for a temporary revocable license to the content, and they have deep lobbying pockets to fight against it.

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Kinrany 2 hours ago | parent [-]

As long as we're in copyright world, it ought to be structured as three separate parties:

1. Licensor, the company who makes the game.

2. Licensee, the person buying a digital copy of the game.

3. Safekeeper, Steam or another platform that stores the digital copy on behalf of Licensee. Similar to how depositories store securities and guarantee that they can be neither lost nor duplicated. For a separate fee perhaps.

	▲	inigyou an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Good luck. SKG got an official response from the EU that was basically "copyright law is a sacred cow, we can't change it"