I know that the terms of license agreements probably reserve the right to do this in the fine print, but Warner Bros knows that people don't read those agreements, and they know that they're giving the perception of a purchase.
I always get extremely annoyed when people say "I'm technically not lying because I said X and you just thought I meant Y". Like, no, you purposefully made me believe something that was not true. You know what I was going to believe when you said X, you depended on that fact, and so it's still lying.
Similarly, Warner Bros. certainly wanted people to assume that these were purchases, so it's extremely dishonest to have fine print in there to be able to take that purchase away.
There are groups pursuing a number of legal actions in the arena to fight this practice. Up until recently, it's been mostly subscription games that get shutdown which is a murky grey area but game companies have started doing this with full priced titles that have sold over 14 million units. The best chances of any progress are in the EU.
Yeah, I was one of the people who actually bought Darkspore back when it was new, and while that game kind of sucks and I didn't really want to play it again, it did really bother me that EA decided to make it so that a single-player game can't play without phoning home, and so when they shut off the server it simply didn't work.
I understand not maintaining the multiplayer stuff, but in the case of the single-player stuff, all it would have taken is one patch to disable to always-online DRM, since they weren't going to be making money from it anymore anyway.
It's just theft. This is why I still try and buy Blu-Rays.
Not that I'd ever condone illegal activity, but I'm just putting it out there that piracy is broadly more convenient, cheaper, has no DRM, and you can keep the media for as long as you want.
It's obviously theft as well, but Warner Bros has already set the precedent that "stealing property is ok".
I'm happy to buy games, but once there's literally no legal way to get a game (or movie or show), then piracy is the only solution to keep that piece of media alive.
Sure, I've bought more than my share of movies, games, books, TV series, but at this point I've kind of drawn a line in the sand of "I will only buy physical media" or "I will only buy it if I can get a DRM-free copy" (e.g. GOG.com). I don't like the idea of my media disappearing the second it becomes inconvenient for the entertainment company.
Sadly, it feels like Blu-rays are becoming a rare thing, particularly in the US. I wanted to buy legit copies of Infinity Train and Close Enough before they were taken off HBO Max, but as far as I'm aware there's no legitimate way to purchase Close Enough. At least Infinity Train can be bought off Amazon streaming still I guess.
It feels like these companies want it both ways. They want total control of the media landscape, while simultaneously taking away the media that we actually like, presumably for tax writeoffs.
It’s a sentiment I broadly agree with. It really bothers me that companies feel entitled to milk money out of us forever now, since you can’t purchase stuff anymore. Everything requires a subscription so we can forever have money extracted and given to our benevolent corporate overlords.
I was fine buying blu-rays, I have over 400 of them, but I don’t want to pay $70+ a month until the end of time to sign up for Netflix and Hulu and Peacock and Paramount Plus and Criterion Channel and ad-free Amazon and HBO Max and YouTube Premium and Disney Plus and Apple TV+ and probably a few stragglers I forgot about.
Let me buy the physical media, or a DRM-free download of the TV shows and movies I want to watch.
Until these entertainment companies fix this, pirated content is just simply a better product.
Sure, but there's legal precedent for "lies by omission" too, even legally [1].
I'm not saying that what Warner Bros does is tantamount to perjury, or even enough to sue over, but I do think it's pretty slimy. It might be allowed, but it's still dishonest, it's still theft from an ethical level, and they absolutely, unequivocally, unambiguously are aware of this fact.
I know that the terms of license agreements probably reserve the right to do this in the fine print, but Warner Bros knows that people don't read those agreements, and they know that they're giving the perception of a purchase.
I always get extremely annoyed when people say "I'm technically not lying because I said X and you just thought I meant Y". Like, no, you purposefully made me believe something that was not true. You know what I was going to believe when you said X, you depended on that fact, and so it's still lying.
Similarly, Warner Bros. certainly wanted people to assume that these were purchases, so it's extremely dishonest to have fine print in there to be able to take that purchase away.