We're getting pretty far off-track which is what I was trying to avoid but ok, I'll try to bring it back around.
I believe a human being has a fundamental right to their own labor, and even if this isn't the case I think we do best acting as if it is. Socialists of all stripes disagree with me; if the state is to claim control of everybody's labor of course you can't hold this right as sacrosanct.
I agree that a market system requires laws and regulations to function. That doesn't mean we should be blindly regulating in the name of consumer rights without thought for the consequences and whether or not it even works. This is why we have the field of economics.
In this case the intended goal of helping the consumer by increasing their "freedom" probably won't be met. Either because 1. game developers can't get funding to develop future games without a stable revenue model so they stop making games, or 2. they realize they can get funding so long as they never actually give the consumer the full game. This leads to the server model where some core functionality of the game only runs on the server and you buy a subscription. Either way, you start with the intention of giving consumers more ownership of games and they end up with less ownership than they started with.
We could spend the next few days waxing intellectual about what freedom really means and all that or we can realize that the plan just doesn't work in meeting its own goals.
I believe a human being has a fundamental right to their own labor, and even if this isn't the case I think we do best acting as if it is. Socialists of all stripes disagree with me; if the state is to claim control of everybody's labor of course you can't hold this right as sacrosanct.
I agree that a market system requires laws and regulations to function. That doesn't mean we should be blindly regulating in the name of consumer rights without thought for the consequences and whether or not it even works. This is why we have the field of economics.
In this case the intended goal of helping the consumer by increasing their "freedom" probably won't be met. Either because 1. game developers can't get funding to develop future games without a stable revenue model so they stop making games, or 2. they realize they can get funding so long as they never actually give the consumer the full game. This leads to the server model where some core functionality of the game only runs on the server and you buy a subscription. Either way, you start with the intention of giving consumers more ownership of games and they end up with less ownership than they started with.
We could spend the next few days waxing intellectual about what freedom really means and all that or we can realize that the plan just doesn't work in meeting its own goals.