What is the difference between a product and a service?
A product is a tangible item a consumer purchases which they have the reasonable belief is completely under thier control to utilize for the intended purpose.
A service is a non-tangible use of skills and/or resources that adds value or improves function. It can be sold seperately or in conjunction with a product.
Now why am I talking about this? Because the City of Heroes, City of Villians, and Going Rogue Disks that we purchased are a product NOT a service. They exist for the express purpose of allowing us to play the game and the act of playing the game should convey perpetual USAGE of any intellectual property contained on that disk for the purposes of playing said game.
This is true everywhere except for poor saps like us playing on a server based MMO. And its not just CoH players who need to challenge that philosophy.
I contend the server is a seperate service which they have every right to discontinue, just as the legal IP holder has every right to cease or continue further development...but NOT to leave us without a functioning product or the right to "repair" our existing product so that it continues to function as a game.
Are these untested legal water, almost definately, but just hear me out. As far as I'm concerned they can do the right thing and help craft a players bill or rights fo the MMO industry or all players of every single cancelled game should be in a single class action law suit
When you buy a Music CD is that not intellectual property? And do you not have the perpetual right to listen to music for your own private enjoyment irregardless of any other considerations solely based on the fact that you have bought ?. If the music company offered added value in online content, discontinuing that content doesn't make your CD stop working or give them the right to confiscate the entire CD?
What about when a band breaks up...does all thier old music just go away?
Lets move to books, if the author switches publishers, a series ends, a book is reprinted, or the author sadly passes on....you can still read your existing books that you purchased. Right? Because you bought the book, and that is the purpose of a book. An outlet through which to read.
How about ebooks, does your ISP, Amazon or anyone else have the right to just randomly encrypt your existing purchase, or otherwise render it no longer opperative?
Lets try a car...imagine a world where a dealer could tell you that your car could only receive fuel, maintenance, or repairs from them...and then they decided to to stop making your car...and you were still bared from getting a single other tank of gas ever from anyone.
Right now we own that car, and they just told us we are closing the only gas station you are allowed to use November 30th. No judge in thier right mind would ever allow a car company to pull that garbage.
How about a cancelled TV show...are all the DVDs and blue rays you purchased not legally yours to watch in perpetuity? Does someone take them away from the library, tell buyers that now that the show is ended they can't even watch it at home?
So now lets look at games are they different...and the answer is no the exact same rules should apply, and they sure appear to.
Board games don't get shipped back to companies or destroyed when they are no longer being published, they sit in basements and boxes And they get played.
Anyone have an original NES, Sega Genesis, Atari, Intellivision, etc...you still have the right to hook them up and play them right? And what about those game cartridges, thats right you can play them or not as you choose or sell them to a re-seller where someone else can buy and continue to use them.
What about computer games...anyone ever played an old game, had a LAN party, or joined a small private server for a game that is no longer being made. Assuming your original purchase was legal and all players are also using legal games there is not a single law you are even bending. No matter how many years have passed since the game was released, or even whether that publisher has folded under thier own abject stupidity.
Since we as a community bought the various city of disks (for those who bought digital copies?)in no way shape or form are we ever going to infringing on anyone's intellectual property rights by USING the item we have puchased for its intended purpose. So how do we do that when half the code is locked away on a server.
The problem is, irregardless of whether anyone gains the rights to further COH or spin off development (*cough* paragon studios, titan, valve, etc *cough*, as things stand now NCsoft will be leaving us without a viable stand-alone, private server, or LAN enabled version of this game...they don't have to continue supporting or developing for us but they do need to leave us with something that is physically capable of functioning in a near aproximation of what we had.
In other words we purchased a product that came with the service...we are entitled to retain use of that product in a functional capacity.
So as I see it, they can give all VIP and Premiere players a patch or working disk that enables functiong client based gaming while using LAN or the internet to enable teaming. And still being able to sell this revised version of te game on shelves.
Sell a perpetual usage of server module, maintenance tools, and basic dev tools to the community for reasonable one time fees (giving them some extra income) and us a very easy transition.
Or fully cooperate with community efforts to "port" the game over to a stand alone and/or community server and come out of this as heroes.
That is how you sunset a game...and it has nothing to do with the legal rights to further development...of which I am also in full support.
This community needs to fight for that much, up to and including in a court of law, because if the entire MMO industry does not accept something very similar as industry practice, then every single MMO player of any game needs to enter into a class action law suit and aquire a players bill of rights.
Lets hear from the lawyers....and everyone else
