Never going to happen. Anything to do with entertainment, be it movies, music, or games, is so heavily lobbied by the entertainment industry for stricter and stricter control, that I doubt the government will ever take the side of the consumer. Rules, regulations, and 'rights' of digital entertainment is already far beyond the point of consumer friendly and only going to get worse.

Yep, I'm well aware of that, but as noted by others, the vast majority of people don't care as long as they can play the latest iteration of Call of BattlefieldCraft right NAOW.

Changing their wording to rent would make me forever avoid Steam.

As it is now, Steam doesn't bother me at all. If they have the game I want at the price I want, I buy it. It's mine forever as far as I'm concerned. In the unlikely event of them going under without a remove DRM plan, I'll get my games one way or another.

Why would someone be an "idiot" to use Steam? Calling someone an offensive name just because they use a service like Steam is pretty low on your part. There are numerous games that are very enjoyable to play that unfortunately are only available on services such as Steam, origin, or Uplay. If someone chooses to use the service it's a choice they make, and any consequences they experience are their choosing.

No reason to resort to degrading someone because they choose the service.

Netflix is a different animal. I don't think they ever present their service as selling movies or tv shows to the consumer in a manner that would lead one to believe they actually own it (I'm not sure, as I haven't used Netflix). I believe they're quite up front about the fact that you pay a monthly rental or access fee and you get to watch what you like. But once you stop paying, you don't get to watch, and you don't get to DL anything to your hard drive.

You are correct about Netflix, all you are doing is paying a monthly fee to stream movies. No saving to hard drive

Most agreements are something like 30 pages long... and they are all the same. We own this, blah blah, can kick you off at any time blah blah, don't be a dick on the forums, blah blah, don't reverse engineer or cheat, blah blah, in any case that's against the customer the company holds no responsibility or liability blah blah...

The agreements shouldn't need a lawyer in order to understand them.

edit: Or be boring as hell...

Do you believe it is even a possibility with so many of your politicians being the bitches of corporate America? There's maybe fractionally more hope that the EU will put some regulation in place to more explicitly protect consumer rights, but I haven't got high expectations and I think there is zero possibility of anything to prevent region locking as the EU law already locks out grey imports.

Which is exactly why from a legal standpoint, how they market themselves is more important than the subscriber's agreement.

Plus, I may be wrong, but I believe the subscriber's agreement refers to the Steam client software ONLY. Not the individual games.

They have posted in forums that offline mode is meant to work indefinitely (and my testing to date backs that up now after at first experiencing several offline mode failures) and there was even an internal post or something recently about how they would handle ties to the client in the case of Steam going out of business or something, with the meme being gamers would still be able to play their games.

At every public opportunity, they CHOOSE to make it appear that they are selling software.

Like you though, I wish some government would pressure them into making it more clear, by either allowing the gamer to have more ownership rights or to make them publicly market the fact that they're renting games.

What I see Steam is, is a small step toward renting, always on DRM. We were never going to go from buying games in retail stores to renting them with always on DRM in one giant step. This is how it works. Steam does muddy the rental/ownership waters as much as possible, and I too wish they would be forced to clear those waters up.

But I too believe that if/when they do, they will still be the largest digital distributors of games in the world, because consumers will be okay with it. I won't, I boycotted Steam for it's entire life until just a couple of years ago when I realized that horse had left the barn, but if they do go full bore rental, I'll be done with them for good. I won't rent a game at any price. Because I've never played a game that I enjoyed that I didn't want to play again later at some point. And if it's a game I wouldn't enjoy, well, I'm not gonna rent that either.

So you are calling anyone who's opinion differs from yours an idiot it sounds like. Pretty sad that you are so rigid in your opinion that you are unable to look at both sides objectively. Resorting to name calling is a pretty weak way to prove a point. It would be more prudent to say something along the lines of "Using Steam, or any DRM service, is something that makes no sense to me as you have no true rights to the game". Some people will disagree with that statement, but it sure is more polite than calling someone an idiot.

It's NOT an opinion. It's a completely objective fact: By using Steam and other DRM services, they are causing the marketplace to be more anti-consumer, thus harming the "purchaser". Stop trying to turn it into an "opinion" to try to criticize.

How is your feeling of Steam not an opinion? There are people who enjoy Steam and other DRM services who's opinion is that there is nothing wrong with them. My whole point was not even about Steam or any DRM service, it was about you calling someone who chooses to use the services an idiot. No reason to call people degrading names because they choose to use a service you don't like.

The frustration (leading to calling others idiots) I think comes from the fact that other peoples' choices affect everyone. For example, if most people had chosen Beta instead of VHS in the early stages of VCR's, then the entire video industry would've been different in the 1990's. Entirely different.

Same here. When gamers support all the steps toward always on DRM and renting instead of owning, then that means for ALL gamers in the future that's likely where the industry will be. (And I firmly believe that's exactly where it will be, at least with all the big companies).

Agree with your statement, and very well put. Thanks for not resorting to name calling to make it.