They’re not purchases, they’re leases.
Edit: it’s actually that you purchase access to their license of the media.
It’s also a private company and they can do whatever they want on their platform and their property.
It’s like renting space in an apartment … don’t be surprised if the landlord decides to change the agreements and do things you don’t like. You’re renting things, you don’t own anything.
why would you defend this
Because you signed (digitally) an agreement that lets them do that.
Pirate everything.
Also, don’t use Google. Wherever possible.
Don’t buy games on Steam or Valve Corporation, they make you sign the User Agreement that legally waves your rights and ownership of games.
Actually, Steam is usually one of the best places when it comes to refunds. The process is simple, and they’re willing to make exceptions to the rules. And the company is run by one of the few CEOs in the gaming industry who seem to actually understand gaming.
And a large portion of the steam community will be super sad if Gaben retires or passes away. We can only hope it continues to be run as well as it has been over the past 15 years.
AU lawsuit against Valve proves Valve didn’t want to refund their customers. Valve is guilty of this violation of Australia law. Many people who used Steam before 2010 tell people they were never given refunds oran option for refunds.
Valve is not good guys, they fought the Australia government to the very top to not pay or offer refunds. They are greedy.
They literally had to be sued by multiple jurisdictions to even offer refunds. The cult of Valve needs to die.
And these companies think piracy is unjustified. No, it’s just holding out an umbrella in the rain.
Piracy is ALWAYS justified! These companies are dead set on robbing me blind. Well guess what: if I never spent a nickel, there’s nothing to rob me of! To the high seas!
Because they have more money than you and, according to the US legal system, that’s all that matters.
A “purchase” or “buy” option, especially when you get an invoice, should ALWAYS mean ownership of the product.
A “borrow” or “rent” option is one that you expect to have to return the product.
Google can’t have it both ways. They either sold people software or they rented it out. Since it was never advertised or marketed as the Google Play Rental Library, they should be forced to give people the products they paid for.
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I am starting to reconsider how I obtain my stuff.
This is a good thing. I don’t know why modern business models for these companies seem to be intentionally anti-consumer, but people will find other ways to get what they are looking for. And if that means spending money with a more ethical company, or simply pirating, they’ll find the path of least resistance.
I used to spend hundreds on the Google Play Store, buying apps and music all the time. Then they started playing stupid games, and I haven’t spent a dollar on the Play Store in years. My money goes to someone else.
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I lucked out last year and ended up scoring something like 1000 DVDs for cheeeeaap. Like $100 or something. I ripped them all (minus any duplicates I already owned) and put them on my NAS. No more worrying about ads, data mining, or even internet/service outages ruining my evening.
I did the same for all my CDs, and while we still do purchase CDs, they are way overpriced.
But purchasing digital music and movies has become harder since Google Play Music went away. It’s almost too much effort to try to buy digital content these days, and it makes no sense. I want to pay for content, but making it impossible just doesn’t work for anyone.
Amazon played their first ad for us on Prime Movies today… during a kid show no less. Just disgusting where things have ended up.
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Not only that. If you buy an app, you are at the mercy of its creator. If they decide they want to fill it with ads and tracking, or switch to a subscription model, there’s nothing you can do. You can’t rollback updates, you can’t install an older version from the play store. If they decide to remove it from the store, you won’t be able to install it any more.
On that note, I bought a GIF viewer app’s full version via in-app purchase and about a year later, they updated the app to have ads again regardless and my “full version no ads” app got ads again and now i had to buy a subscription per month to be “ad free” needless to say I uninstalled
Well you can always use https://blokada.org (version 5, which runs on your phone). It stops most ads.
I set up a VPN tunnel to my home network and use pihole to block ads which worked on this app too, so that wasn’t a problem but the audacity to remove my paid-for full access was astoundingly awful
i use Adblock dns
It’s their accounts, you just have access to them. They can close the whole thing tomorrow.
I don’t even want to know what will happen when the valve guy retires. A publicly owned (edit: meant to write privately owned) company that could just shut down tomorrow. Many gaming publishers are aware, having their own launchers. Are you?
I’m telling you, root server, self-hosted everything and FOSS. If you can’t do your things with that, it ain’t worth doing anyway.
It’s a private company. You can’t invest in them.
Valve is private, yes, but you can still invest into them if Gabe accepts your investment.
You’ll own nothing and you’ll be happy
