this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2025
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Not true. With older physical games which fit on the CDs/DVDs you by law owned your copy and had full ownership over it to do whatever you wanted.
That's the difference between license and owning.
No, when you own a game, you can make copies and sell them. That is because owning the game means you own the copyright to the game.
If you are not the owner of the IP (which you aren’t, unless you own the company that made the game), then the only way to legally play the game is for the actual owner to provide you with some kind of license. If you don’t have a license then the default copyright rules apply which means you aren’t legally allowed to have or play a copy.
Your license is also limited and doesn’t allow you to ‘do whatever you want’. Try selling copies and see how quickly you get sued. You can’t even do what you want with your single copy. Go buy a bunch of physical games and start a game rental business. Or buy a bunch of physical games and open a game cafe where people can play ‘your’ games. Your license doesn’t allow you to do that.
I own every book on my shelf. That copy is not the same as copyright. Grow up.
Exactly. You own the physical paper, you don’t own the text on that paper, you only have a license to it.
No. I own that copy. It's not a license to anything. I own it. It's mine. That's what the money was for.
Don't play corporate word games with concepts as basic as having things.
Yeah that’s not how copyright works. You are either the owner of the IP (i.e. the company that paid for developing the game) or you need a license to be allowed to own/play a copy. There is no third option here.
It’s not word games, it’s the law. You and I may not like it but that doesn’t really change anything.
Copyright is about copying. When someone sells you a product, and you buy it, then you own it. No license is involved. Under the first sale doctrine, no license can be involved - a book can't have an insert with a EULA. They can print it... but it doesn't matter. You bought that slip of paper, too.
If you stubbornly believe there's some instant contract required to look at the logo on a candy wrapper, why are you tutting at people for calling that intolerable nonsense, instead of demanding a change to that intolerable nonsense?