- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmit.online
- pcgaming@lemmy.ca
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmit.online
- pcgaming@lemmy.ca
Larian director of publishing Michael Douse, never one to be shy about speaking his mind, has spoken his mind about Ubisoft’s decision to disband the Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown development team, saying it’s the result of a “broken strategy” that prioritizes subscriptions over sales.
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is quite good. PC Gamer’s Mollie Taylor felt it was dragged down by a very slow start, calling it “a slow burn to a fault” in an overall positive review, and it holds an enviable 86 aggregate score on Metacritic. Despite that, Ubisoft recently confirmed that the development team has been scattered to the four winds to work on “other projects that will benefit from their expertise.”
This, Douse feels, is at least partially the outcome of Ubisoft’s focus on subscriptions over conventional game sales—the whole “feeling comfortable with not owning your game” thing espoused by Ubisoft director of subscriptions Philippe Tremblay earlier this year—and the decision to stop releasing games on Steam, which is far and away the biggest digital storefront for PC gaming.
All consumer software is only available as a license. That is how the law is written, if you hate that fact you need to lobby for changing the law.
First sale doctrine applies to some software and not to others(often having to do with possessing physical media). Their general argument that it doesn’t is when they say it’s a “license” but that license gets superseded by the first sale doctrine where applicable. It’s a general shit show.
Point me to the EU law which clearly states this, please.
EU is similarly confused about first sale doctrine as the US is. Steam was ordered to allow games reselling by a French court but eventually got it reversed on appeal, for example. https://www.bfmtv.com/amp/tech/gaming/la-justice-se-prononce-contre-le-droit-de-revendre-ses-jeux-video-dematerialises_AN-202210240308.html
This is despite the first sale doctrine being established as part of digital media in the EU with https://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf;jsessionid=A87D18058F3F93DB5719943E51D3B25F?text=&docid=121981&pageIndex=0&doclang=en&mode=lst&dir=&occ=first&part=1&cid=6657274