Oh for sure. What I meant was “check router for a built in VPN and use it if it has one, otherwise use wireguard because it’s the easiest”.
The specific VPN doesn’t really matter so much. The built-in one would be the easiest, so checking for a solution that took a few clicks is worth it. :)
I would use something like wireguard, or another VPN service you can host yourself if your router supports it natively.
From the looks of it Minecraft servers seem to have dogshit authentication, so using some form of private network setup is going to be your best move.
That is a good point.
On the flip side, they’re not largely selling something that has any physical finiteness to it anymore, and the sales volumes have increased drastically, resulting in significantly higher profits despite a smaller inflation adjusted unit cost.
The cost of a good decreasing as an industry matures feels right. Jello cost 23¢ a box in 1940. Adjusted for inflation it should cost $5.17 a box now, but it’s only $1.59.
When there’s 2 games to buy, they can be justifiably more expensive than when there’s a massive surplus.
The games are different, but it’s not like consumers can’t find a different one they’ll also enjoy if the first one they look at is too expensive.
Inflation has made $60 less valuable, but they’re not selling to the same market that they were 30 years ago either.
It’s hard to use inflation to justify raising prices or adding exploitative features when you’re already seeing higher inflation adjusted profits due to a larger more accessible market, lower risk due to reduced publishing overhead, and more options for consumers, which would be expected to bring prices down.
CEOs of companies that are adjacent to technology desperately want to ensure that their company isn’t seen as “outdated”, almost more than they want to actually not be outdated.
So when a technology comes that everyone in tech leadership is saying is the bestest, they want to make sure everyone knows they’re totally with it, whatever the cool kids are talking about.
Hype train goes chugga chugga.
As the hype train slows, they still need to be onboard, but they set expectations based on what their people are actually telling them.
So this is the CEO yelling to do something, and then the news slowly percolating back from the tech people that they can, but only a handful of projects can do so in a way that makes sense, has impact, and doesn’t disrupt a timeline or budget in a way that requires shareholder disclosure.
I just learned about some of the additional context from another comment, so it definitely might not be part of this branch in the narrative. Having spent at least a little time and energy developing the weapon, they’re not gonna just waste it, and having filled out the budget paperwork for a charity donation, it’s was also going to happen one way or another.
It’s not bad or anything, it’s just how you tell a story involving unpredictable interactions, “being a business that has a budget and employee salaries”, and also the PR 101 lesson of “never withhold charity”.
My bet, given how you budget for this type of PR stuff, is that it was basically the players picking the story that got told while they got a new weapon and a charity donation happened. Like if the players hadn’t chosen to do so, there would have been some contrivance for someone certainly has to save the children. Since they saved them, now the children will get together and give you this thank you gift, or something.
Illusion of choice, but not in a bad way.
They know what they’re trying to do, which is to bait people into spending money on their platform so they can have revenue numbers to show developers to get them to release on their platform to get people to want to spend money with them without bait.
Taking the bait but not getting caught in the trap isn’t quite pulling one over on them, but it’s also not what they were hoping for, so it’s not not taking advantage.
I don’t know what to tell you beyond “in the US, not all licenses are transferable”. Different countries have different laws.
It’s a pretty well trod area of law, so it’s not really contentious that it’s a legal license term in the US.
https://www.shadesofgraylaw.com/2009/12/14/cant-transfer-this/ is an example. It’s less tested for consumers.
The lawyers are definitely there to protect the company. No lawyer is ever there to follow the intent of the law, because it’s the letter that matters in almost every circumstance.
Knowingly adding an illegal term to the terms of the agreement is a great way to not only fail to protect the company, because the entire thing might get tossed out, but to risk professional consequences.
Even the Microsoft terms of service say “non-transferable unless you’re in Germany or other EU jurisdiction where such clauses are unenforceable”.
I’m sure someone will challenge it in the EU then at some point.
In the US not all licenses are transferable, and that includes things like “accounts”.
Valve and gog have the same policy. I’m fairly confident that both of them didn’t decide to violate the law in the same way that’s also consistent with how other digital licensing arrangements work without consulting with some lawyers on their user agreements.
A death certificate is very much not a court order. A death certificate is often available to anyone who wants to demonstrate that someone is dead.
It’d be like using mailing address as proof of identity. Someone’s mailing address is in some ways less public than their death certificate.
That was very well explained. :)
I really think it’s a case of valve being explicit (no, your uncle can’t will you his steam collection), and gog having the same policy but looking for the closest way to say “yes” to avoid falling into the same PR trouble.
“No, access is lost when you die” is a valve support person giving a direct response to an individuals question.
“Yes, if we are given no legal choice” is a gog PR person answering a reporter to sound as good as possible.
It’s one of the better known downsides of digital media, so this whole thing feels a little… Much ado about nothing new.
A probate court validating a will isn’t a court order is the thing.
For both companies, they agreed to provide you access to the titles in exchange for money. You can’t generally will a service to someone else.
It’s why things like bank accounts get crazy weird with estates (weird for anyone other than a banker or lawyer). We’ve had a very long time to work out how we handle it. The money in the account is an asset owned by the estate. It’s a “thing” that you can will. The account itself is owned by the estate, but it can’t be willed because it’s an agreement between the bank and the deceased.
When the estate is being handled, only the person managing it can access the bank account, and then they move the money to the accounts of the person who gets the money, even if it’s at the same bank.
Games in your game library aren’t assets like money is. They’re non-transferable licenses. A physical disk is an asset.
We give you and other GOG users the personal right (known legally as a ‘license’) to use GOG services and to download, access and/or stream (depending on the content) and use GOG content. This license is for your personal use. We can stop or suspend this license in some situations, which are explained later on.
https://support.gog.com/hc/en-us/articles/212632089-GOG-User-Agreement?product=gog
Their user agreement is particularly approachable, and includes nice explanations next to the sections.
This is whole thing is really a case of valve being very explicit about a significant drawback of digital assets to avoid confusion (their support has clearly had to address this situation before 😔). Gog is answering a press question being asked in response to the explicit reply from valve, so of course they’re going to avoid saying “our policy is the same”.
If it were routinely transferable via normal estate transfer, they wouldn’t need to specify the need for a court order, or that the installers are drm free so they couldn’t revoke access. If it went to an estate, the account would transfer automatically with the estate like every other tangible good.
https://respawnfirst.com/what-happens-to-your-gog-account-if-you-die-gog-confirms-policy/
Their full statement is really just that they’ll comply with a court order specifically relating to the library, less a general estate settlement.
In general, your GOG account and GOG content is not transferable. However, if you can obtain a copy of a court order that specifically entitles someone to your GOG personal account… we’ll do our best to make it happen.
This is really just a more casual phrasing of valves policy.
Steam accounts and games are non-transferable. Steam support can’t provide someone else with access to the account or merge its contents with another account. Your Steam account cannot be transferred via a will.
It’s not like valve is going to ignore a court order either.
Licences are different than physical goods.
With a physical good you’re transferring ownership of that “thing”, and the new owner can do as they like, except for the exceptions made for copyright.
With a licensed thing, it’s closer to a rental. Just because you rented the tool doesn’t mean you can sell it, and it doesn’t mean that the rental company is obligated to let your next of kin keep using it.
This goes double for things like digital media, because the rental company is also the one who has actual possession of the thing. They’re not taking anything, they’re just not giving someone they never did business with access to it.
Yup. It’s why they’re unlikely to get conversions, but they might get people to do both.
Consoles compete with PC gaming, but they’re not substitutes. The best they can hope for is people who are relatively indifferent to the advantages a PC has being persuaded by the console advantages, or people who are okay with just having both picking a PS5 over an Xbox or Nintendo.
For the latter, I think they’d be better served looking for a way to do “but it in one, play it in both” type deals, since that makes the ambivalent people more likely to default to PlayStation, since they still get PC, and the “both” people are more likely to buy sooner, since waiting doesn’t get them anything.
I feel like the better thing to compete on is “plug it in and it works”, “easier to play on your couch and TV with a controller than a PC” and various comparisons to the other consoles.
Other than setup and ease of couch gaming, PC has them beat hands down. And it’s only very slightly easier in those dimensions too.
Oh, really? I feel like I grabbed it for like, $30 or so a couple months back.
I could see a federated recommendation engine/ranking system/the social parts of game ownership, but I just don’t see it panning out for the actual commerce part.
Those parts benefit from being able to control your own data and who it’s shared with. I don’t think there’s a reasonable way to federate giving a specific individual money and them authorizing you to download or access a resource they control.
Well, I don’t think they’re interested in selling directly. There’s a lot of overhead in handling credit card payments and dealing with the jurisdictional issues of sales tax, currency conversion, and regional age and content restrictions.
Your notion sounds perfectly lovely from the consumer side, but from the creator side it’s not much different from not using the system at all.
Yeah, it’s definitely faster, but I’m not sure it’s going to make too much of a difference for a Minecraft server.
With setting it up being a bit annoying by hand, I’d still rank the router option higher even if it’s a worse VPN. Otherwise you risk ending up in that yak shaving situation where you’re fighting with routing tables and DNS when you wanted a Minecraft server.