Spec Ops: The Line permanently removed from Steam and other digital stores

simple@lemm.ee to Games@lemmy.world – 145 points –
Spec Ops: The Line permanently removed from Steam and other digital stores
theverge.com

Something something digital ownership

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I hate to say it, but games should stop using licensed music. Or at least if it has an expiry date, which they all seem to. Every game that licenses a song becomes a ticking time bomb before it is either pulled from sale or all of the music gets patched out, even if you purchased it before then.

And if using this licensed music it'd be nice to use music from smaller bands if they don't add an expiry.

That kind of defeats the purpose of using licensed music.

It gets smaller bands better known so it's not like it's a bad deal for them.

I don't understand why a company would even want to use the music if it means they can only sell the game for so long. Obviously, it's not the current reality, but I would outright refuse any deal that involves a limited amount of time to use material that goes into a video game, movie, any form of media except maybe live services that are constantly changing anyways (which is a separate issue).

At the very least, people should be made aware of a game's sale period, though I'm sure that's kept under NDA.

Because capitalism is hilariously shortsighted. Line must go up.

I mean the game came out in 2012. It's not really that absurd to base ones licensing contracts for 14 years when the medium (games) generate the vast majority of their revenue in the first months.

Most digital products have an end of life. I agree that the whole digital ownership part isn't fair, but I don't think a 14 year selling window due to licensing is the part to be mad at.

It makes sense financially if the game is expected to have a big spike of sales initially, and after a while have very few sales, so the expected additional lifetime revenue is less than the cost difference between a temporary and perpetual license.