Do You Actually Own Your Digital Games?

Matt: [00:00:00] All righty, everybody, this is another edition of the Web News, and we wanna discuss digital ownership, 'cause it is a hot button issue. We've had the whole PlayStation 5 no longer making discs in 2028 situation, so physical games kinda being threatened. There's been some rumors, at least at this point, um, regarding some digital to, or the fr- some disc-to-digital conversion stuff on Microsoft's side.

That is currently still a rumor, but it seems like news is gonna break any day. So by the time you listen to this, you might be like, "Matt, we have all the news on that." But at this current point, we do not. But I wanted to look at an article that I've recently found here, and I found it on Windows Central, and it is Xbox fan successfully sues Microsoft for blocking his entire digital games library in what could be a huge win for the consumer. Brazilian Xbox player OrdoLiberal, that's the username, recently won a court case against Microsoft, proving you can fight for the right to preserve digital ownership of your games and win. [00:01:00] Um, so unfortunately, uh, this, this guy here, OrdoLiberal, um, he found out that his Microsoft account was hacked, uh, and then of course, it was promptly suspended. Uh, but un- unfortunately, the Microsoft IT team determined that it was unrecoverable by policy due to the account security details being changed by the hacker. Um, and this is not the first time that Windows Central has actually seen this. So of course, he's gonna lose access to all of his Xbox games, but this is not an Xbox account.

This is a Microsoft account. So as a result of being blocked, OrdoLiberal not only lost his Xbox games, but also all of his access to his OneDrive files. And remember, because this is a Microsoft account, you can have other things in here as well. You could have your Microsoft 365 subscription attached to this.

Now, can you, can you spin up another Microsoft account and buy another subscription for that? Certainly. But that's an inconvenience. But the OneDrive files being missing, that's serious stuff, especially since [00:02:00] if the person is a, is a content creator, I'm not saying this, that that OrdoLiberal is, but if, if this person's a content creator and they store all of their, their stuff on there, you know, what's gonna happen there?

What if they're in school and they stored crucial projects? What if they're at work and they stored crucial projects on there? Whether or not you trust OneDrive or not to store kind of very critical data like that, I know some people will, some people will not, the point of the matter is this wasn't You know, the hacker going in and stealing the OneDrive files.

This is the hacker going in, changing the account details, and now you've... But because of policy, you, Microsoft's like, "Nope, that's it. Sorry, you can't have access to that anymore," because you're, you're effectively renting the space. And so what happened here? So, um... And he was enraged that Microsoft took away his game library and insisted that he, a- a- and...

Well, Microsoft insisted that he buy those games again. Ordolibero then sued Microsoft in a digital library lawsuit. The court case dragged on until July 12th, 2026, when Ordoliberal announced on Reddit that he had actually [00:03:00] won. according to, and these are translated comments, the Brazilian court rule, uh, ruled in favor of Ordolibero under Brazil's strict consumer laws and has ordered Microsoft to completely restore Ordolibero's account, giving him his entire Xbox digital library, his Xbox digital games library back and to pay him $400 in damages.

So this is sort of a win in terms of what we're buying digitally 'cause here's the thing. When you buy something digitally, many people don't really care 'cause many people will sort of consume games. They'll buy a game, they'll play it to completion once or twice. They'll be done with it, and they will never return, or maybe they'll return years later when a remaster comes out. But they will never return to that original thing that they purchased. But there are also many people who constantly go back and go back through. If you watch... I watch a fair bit of content creators. They will talk about how they do a yearly playthrough of their favorite Splinter Cell game or their favorite GTA or their favorite whatever, [00:04:00] enter in game here, and they do a yearly playthrough of that. Or they'll go back and revisit things for nostalgia's sake here and there. They'll watch a trailer or something will remind them of their favorite childhood game, and they'll go back. When you buy something digitally, in control of the store. Like, the store itself has control. They can just say, "Sorry, this is now no longer available for download." And, uh, okay, great. And in this case, it was like, "Hey, man, sorry, your whole account's gone, including all your games." It's not like there was a solution that was offered as far as we know according to this article. There was no solution offered that was like, "Hey, man, that really sucks. Can we, you know, make you a new account and give you back your games?"

You know, there was no sort of like middle ground that was offered. So there's been, like, a fair bit of conversation here, um, 'cause digital preservation of games has of course been quite a hot topic. It says so right in this article here, uh, following, you know, Sony's sort of physical media culling, if you will, where they're like, "Hey, we're done with physical games." But [00:05:00] this is interesting 'cause what this has done is this is a digital ownership conversation, but it also has kind of translated into a digital preservation thing as well, where even though this guy lost his entire account In the case of, let's say I buy five games, 10, 15 years go by, and I'm talking digital games, 10, 15 years go by, m- is it possible that maybe my account's still good, but they take away one, two, th- or three out of those five games? "Oh, sorry, these are delisted. You can no longer get them, and you can no longer download them even though you paid... you purchased them." Would a court case win like this actually make a bit of a difference? don't know if that's the case, but I think it is a step in that direction, and I personally think that that's stepping in the right direction

Mikhail: Uh, I, I think you're, you're probably right that it is a step in the direction, but I think that is pretty f- a pretty sh- small step. Because from my understanding of this, and this could be very surface level, so take it with a [00:06:00] grain of salt, this was his Microsoft account being banned for an unrelated reason to gaming, obviously, and that froze his entire game library.

That falls a little bit out of the terms of service, right? So that's why the court case had a good shot at winning, and they did win. Um, whereas if, let's say, the situation happened as you said, like just 15 years down the line a couple of those games are gone, as far as I understand it, when you buy a digital game from a digital store, there is a terms of service that allows them to do that, so you're kind of agreeing to it.

Now...

Matt: buying a license. You're buying a

Mikhail: Correct

Matt: has all these terms and things inside of it. Yeah,

Mikhail: Yeah. S- so like that i- in itself is actually not, like, enough to guard the company. Like Microsoft, the terms of services have notoriously been, you know, battled in court, uh, because they're just so lengthy and so ile- ineligible. Like they're so, they're so impossible to read that [00:07:00] you can like almost use that as a defense, uh, that you didn't read it.

But the precedent would be very difficult to establish, like because this is a license and not a phy- a product. Like you're not even buying the digital rights to that game, you're buying a license to those rights. Um, yeah. It, it just... I don't think it's gonna solve that. What I think has to solve it is competition in the, in the space, GOG being the top one, right?

Like that one you're buying the game and you're owning the installer for that game. Like their, their whole, their whole shtick is like you can buy it, download the installer, and you'll never lose it, right? Like you can put it on your own physical media and it's yours. That is your game now.

Matt: games, that's

Mikhail: G- GOG, yeah, yeah.

Matt: they are DRM-free.

Mikhail: Correct. Yeah. So I think that competition, like the competition in the space pushing the other ones to maybe put that option out there is going to be our best bet. Legislation might help as well, like you're saying. I, I think a, a [00:08:00] win like this maybe the only thing that it does is like it, it, it bubbles it up to the top and maybe that, uh, the next win might be like another step like you s- like you're saying, like a small step and a small step until we have

Matt: the thing though. Brazil has strict, like, consumer laws, and

Mikhail: Mm-hmm.

Matt: of fell within it, which is interesting,

Mikhail: Which is good, yeah. That, that is a good thing for, on the Brazil side of things. I don't know if it, it'll fully benefit us, sometimes does. Um, but like, yeah, I, I don't know. Uh, it, I-- My, my biggest concern with all this personally is that I have so many of these subscriptions that if I were to lose one, like for example, my Google subscription, my whole life runs through my Google account, right?

Like my main Gmail is the thing that connects everything together. Uh, if I were to be banned from that, I would lose access to so many things that my life, like my digital life at least would have to pretty much restart. That's my biggest concern, [00:09:00] the fact that they're, they, they do ban accounts, right?

And sometimes they ban accounts for no reason other than like a mistake on their end. Sometimes they ban accounts for good reason, obviously. And there's very little that the general public can do about that because, you know, a lot of times you'll go through an appeals process and they'll just be like, "Nope."

Um, that's a big, that's a big, big concern for me because there's also many other accounts like that. Like if, you know, there's the, if there's another, you know, my password manager for whatever, for whatever reason would ban my account, like 1Pass. Uh, there's so many little things that I'm, I'm kinda relying on a third party to maintain access to.

Banks. Banks are usually pretty good, but like there's these digital banks out there like, um, that handle payroll and stuff, Revolut and, uh, Gusto, and Wise. Like those guys, they've been known, PayPal as well, to freeze accounts, right? Like for whatever reason. Like they see one bad transaction, they see a weird-- Uh, I've, I've [00:10:00] heard of like if you're, if, if, if the person has some sort of court case in a different country or some...

Anyway, there, there's like millions of reasons that they could freeze your money be- for especially business accounts, and then you're screwed. Again, you're relying on this digital third party for a very substantial part of your life, your income, and your best bet is to just kind of appeal and hope for the best.

That's where a lot of stuff is going right now, and the lack of Guardrails put in place, for lack of a better word, against it is scary to me Digital games ob... Like Steam is a concern to me actually. I know people like laud Steam as like the, you know, the, the good one in the space. Steam games, like I f- that's, that's the problem.

That's my worry. What happens when gay Ben passes? We don't know

Matt: e- and, and not even necessarily that. Like, like that would suck certainly, but [00:11:00] what if, what if, uh, like Steam starts doing poorly? What if someone does come in to

Mikhail: Yeah

Matt: game store front on PC, offers just amazing competition, and starts taking that market share away from Steam? Steam's gonna have to start doing something.

What is that thing?

Mikhail: That's the... And that's a huge concern because, like, my entire digital game library is on there, and there's no guarantee that it'll be there in five, 10 years or 20 years, whatever. There is no guarantee, and there's no way to download those games locally. So honestly, I'm almost, like, starting to go the route of just promoting GOG gaming as much as possible to get them to hopefully be a disruptor.

Now, that's a very small percentage chance, um, because people will still use all these other things. But I just w- I want more... Like, I wish Steam would do what GOG gaming did. I ki- I want, I want them to put enough pressure on for [00:12:00] Steam to accept it and be like, "Okay, you know what? Even if it's just, like, for these games that don't have demo- Denuvo, whatever, uh, DRM protection, you are able to download these games locally, and you can keep them forever."

I would... That would be s- that would be amazing. That would be a huge win in my eyes. That would be the thing that kinda beats this stuff. And then maybe Microsoft gets pressure to do that. Maybe... You know, even if the disc drive goes away, let's say that that's the case, maybe it's hard drives that you're able to, like, download your games onto and keep them forever, right?

Like, there's ways around the disc drive situation that if legislation comes through or if pr- enough competition comes through, I think it is solvable. It's just, yeah, I don't know. I, I don't know if there's gonna be enough pressure on these big guys to, to make them move

Matt: Well, the one thing too, or two, like it's mentioned extremely briefly in the article here, but it does say that the European Union is also taking a more aggressive, [00:13:00] aggressive stance on digital preservation. So you did mention legislation. Like, that would

Mikhail: Yeah

Matt: of that, of course. We are starting to see that.

I mean, the EU just did that whole removable battery thing where, like, most devices, there's... W- there are some exceptions, need to have removable batteries. Um, and, and you're seeing companies like Nintendo having, having to have Switches with, with removable batteries, for example.

Mikhail: Mm-hmm.

Matt: like, that's, that's kind of interesting.

Um, USB-C on iPhones, for example, that was

Mikhail: Yep

Matt: pioneered by the EU, although it kind of seemed like the tech industry was going that way, but who knows what Apple wanted to do, right? Whether they wanted a proprietary port or whomever, 'cause I kept, kept hearing they did, they didn't, they did, so who knows?

I don't really care. Like, w- we've reached USB-C. Like, however we got there, I think that that was... That's sort of the future. That's sort of the way we're gonna handle it, and then I'm sure another port will come out eventually that'll be better, but we'll see. Um, the, the thing, the thing here is, though, is, is, um, what's interesting is, like, the...

When, when things are banned, there's [00:14:00] like a million... There's a bunch of ways things can get banned. When it comes to gaming accounts, I always think it's the social aspect where somebody says something inappropriate in, like, a PlayStation chat, and then they get banned. They lose access to the library and things, and I understand that that's within the terms of service or however it's worded. I almost wonder if th- this type of issue that just happened here, and yes, I understand the whole account got, you know, ir- got suspended, like, indefinitely effectively. One thing I kind of wonder is whether we're gonna have to silo the enforcement of things. So it'll be something like somebody does do something inappropriate on PlayStation, why are they being banned?

Well, you're trying to keep the community safe, or you're trying to keep the community from having someone, you know, yell a bunch of, like, crypto scams over PlayStation chat or whatever that is they're, they're doing. Okay, ban them from just PlayStation chat, and they're still able to access their games.

I kind of wonder if we're gonna start seeing that, where we start seeing the siloing of things, um, and, and things like that and, and... Or like you're saying, Mike, where they're gonna be given access to, like, a special portal where they can just download their products. Like, here's [00:15:00] the thing, maybe they're banned from PlayStation network and they can't

Mikhail: Mm-hmm.

Matt: online.

They should sti- I think you should still be allowed to download those online games. Even

Mikhail: Me too

Matt: are 100% worthless to you, you can't use them, you still... You sh- like technically you bought that, technically you bought those files. You should be able to download them But unfortunately, like the PlayStation Network, the social aspect you might get banned from, and I do understand like some bans, but I think it's just, it's too much of a blanket. We have like blanket accounts, like Microsoft accounts, like PlayStation accounts, things like that for simplicity. But, but under the hood, I think maybe we need to start siloing them a little bit and that would help this to an extent. Um, and I... That's just, that's just where I land, I think. I think that, that, you know, game preservation is important. Allowing people to access the things that they purchased is important, and I think we need to start looking at digital ownership being beyond just a license. 'Cause what people are really saying now is, you know, you're more or less just renting it, and that has really affected me. I used to kind of go crazy [00:16:00] when games went on sale, summer sales and things, 'cause I was like, "Oh, I'll get to the, that this year, so I'll buy it 'cause it's like so cheap."

I, I still do it a little bit, but I actually take pause and think, "This is actually just kind of a rental.

Mikhail: Mm-hmm.

Matt: of buying like an indefinite rental."

Mikhail: I, I'm in the same boat as you. I'm in the same boat. I stopped, I pretty much stopped buying games for the future because I don't know if I'll... If they'll be around when I want to play them. Like my, my I have a weird vision of myself like in a retirement home being able to play all these games, but what's the, what's the guarantee that Steam is even around at that point?

None. Um, I still like, like you said, I still will have- make the exception. Like I bought the Mass Effect, uh, Legendary Edition or whatever it's called for like five bucks or whatever. Like that was just seemed like a great deal and I'll play that at some point in my life if it's still around. But that's, that was the only game that I bought for the future, uh, in the last like long time.

Matt: Yeah. I mean it, like, even me, like, I just... I bought two games. One [00:17:00] of them I wanted to specifically support the d- like, over the Steam summer sale I'm

Mikhail: Mm-hmm.

Matt: One of them I specifically wanted to support the developer, and yes, you can make the argument I should have bought it full price, this and that. Hey,

Mikhail: Yeah

Matt: bargain hunting, I found a bargain.

I was like, "I like this dev, I'm gonna buy this." Uh, and then also I bought, like, one other game that I am, like, literally it's an early access game that's about to come out, and that's when I'm gonna play it. So it's like,

Mikhail: Okay.

Matt: I

Mikhail: That's not for the future. Yeah.

Matt: I'm just waiting for the release, which is in September or something like that.

So, you know, soon enough more or less. But I'm starting to make decisions with, like, the real world ownership consequences or the real world ownership realities, I suppose, in mind. But anyway, I think that's the web news, uh, for this week. Let us know what you think about whole game preservation, the o- the digital ownership conversation, whole license thing where you're kinda like making an indefinite rental, so to speak, in some cases. What do you think about all this, and what do you think about this court case? Is it good, bad, et cetera? I'm [00:18:00] sure this will, you know, kinda drum up some comments, and I'd love to, uh, love to read them, love to have a bit of discourse and conversation as, uh, we've been having a ton of, of conversations over the PlayStation 5, PlayStation 5, uh, disc conversation.

I've been getting a ton of comments and replying to a ton of them, not all of them of course, but getting to as many as I can. And that's it, that's the web news for this week. see you later.

Mikhail: Bye