cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1248556/fair-playstation-sony-is-facing-a-lawsuit-seeking-more-than-eur400-million-in-damages-on
Lucia Melcherts, chair of Stichting Massaschade & Consument statement:
The end of physical discs removes the last place where a PlayStation game could still be bought and sold at a competitive price. No discs means no second-hand market and no alternative to the PlayStation Store, so from 2028, Sony alone decides what a game costs and even how long you are allowed to use it. That is exactly the harm our Fair PlayStation claim is about: a price can never be fair when the buyer is left with no ownership and no alternative.
The answer to stopping these practices regardless of company is to vote with your wallet. But people won’t ever do that. They keep giving these companies money hand over fist. Why would you, as a company, lower your revenue on “good faith”.
Until people actually stop buying the console and games, Sony and others have absolutely no reason to change their business model.
People keep buying things because they don’t know what they’ve lost and think the product is good as-is. There is no idea of what was before or how things used to be because they were never a part of them. Those practices were from long ago, many console generations, and people will always choose convenience over cost, even non-monetary costs.
Regulation is the answer not voting with your wallet which never works and does absolutely nothing.
Not voting with your wallet doesn’t work? Someone aught to tell Disney that after many people ended their Hulu and Disney+ subscriptions once Kimmel was fired.
Regulation is the answer, full stop.
Whataboutism isn’t saving your argument.
Even if it is an answer, is your suggestion to wait for a theoretical solution that hasn’t appeared so far and doesn’t seem to be on the horizon, to the exclusion of doing anything else?
Idealism isn’t strengthening your argument.
How about doing multiple things, you know, just in case, on the very small (minuscule, really) off-chance you happen to be incorrect or even not fully correct ?[1]
As unlikely as that scenario is , i mean ↩︎
I don’t disagree that there needs to be regulation. I fully agree there needs to be regulation. Companies can and will fuck customers over with little to no concern. See for example the enshitification of pretty much everything.
All I am saying is that there are times when voting with your wallet has successfully bullied companies into complying with the will of the people.