Amazon Luna just proved the “Buy” button may not mean ownership. Games people paid full price for are disappearing, cloud saves are being deleted, and Amazon...
On June 10th any game purchases people made through Amazon’s Luna service will be removed, with no refunds. On June 3rd they’re ending the “bring your own library” feature where you could link to certain outside accounts (GOG, etc.) and get those to stream on Luna.
There’s more about Buy button shenanigans and digital ownership, but that’s the part the headline refers to.
To grab your save data. The purchased games themselves disappear on June 10th. There will still be a selection of games to stream (Game Pass/Xcloud style) after that date, but you have to wonder how long that’ll last.
Yup, and in some cases where applicable they also gave you the keys to specific publisher libraries, like I got Assassin’s Creed Origins and Odyssey added to my Uplay account with my saves intact right before Stadia shut down.
You can hate Google for lots of things, but when it comes to Stadia they handled it right.
do you store entire game binaries and assets in your fucking blockchain? fucking 150gb games in the fucking blockchain? how fucking big is this thing? who hosts it?
No, it seems you and many others fundamentally misunderstand that a blockchain is a distributed ledger as primary functionality, not a data store as such. It stores proof of ownership, that you purchased it from an authorized registered distributor, that’s it. Just to be thorough, all ledgers require further external consensus for functionality.
In this case, a service (who stores and sends the big file) must recognize your token as ownership. What this solves is that when movie x is bought from Amazon and moves to Streamio and then moves to Paramount, you can load your token into Paramount and Paramount can see your token was created by warner brothers, so they can legally serve you Blazing Saddles without contacting Amazon or Streamio, which since has gone out of business.
Today, when they move licenses or whatever else happens, you lose whatever you bought. With a distributed ledger you automatically have proof of purchase to any entity that is able and willing (or legally forced) to use that ledger for validation, and no single entity can just erase your ownership like they can and do today.
The string of bits doesn’t have to be part of an expensive blockchain though, it can just as easily be a generated uuid. In either case, the technology relies on multiple parties honouring your claim.
Hell it could be tied to an email address and nothing else.
Yes it needs support, as almost all blockchains do, they are public consensus models. All it needs is for a token to connect to a specific piece of media. You prove ownership of that token and the streaming service honors your ownership. You move steaming services? They still honor your ownership. Likely also needs legislative support to enforce honoring the token and enforce studios to provide same access to all distributors.
I think there are 2 types of drm, one is invasive and the other is permissive. Everything needs some sort of Auth and permission drm, and usually it sits in a company dB and if they go under or remove it, you lose Auth. I think that type of system can be better under a blockchain model, moving universal ownership to a decentralized ledger. Services still must recognize the ledger as valid, but then no single provider is the arbiter of your ownership and Auth.
On June 10th any game purchases people made through Amazon’s Luna service will be removed, with no refunds. On June 3rd they’re ending the “bring your own library” feature where you could link to certain outside accounts (GOG, etc.) and get those to stream on Luna.
There’s more about Buy button shenanigans and digital ownership, but that’s the part the headline refers to.
So people have “90 days” to what? Play the games? Before they disappear?
To grab your save data. The purchased games themselves disappear on June 10th. There will still be a selection of games to stream (Game Pass/Xcloud style) after that date, but you have to wonder how long that’ll last.
Say what you will about Stadia, but at least Google gave everyone full refunds when that shut down.
Yup, and in some cases where applicable they also gave you the keys to specific publisher libraries, like I got Assassin’s Creed Origins and Odyssey added to my Uplay account with my saves intact right before Stadia shut down.
You can hate Google for lots of things, but when it comes to Stadia they handled it right.
This is where blockchains can be useful. Buy once, valid everywhere always with a little support.
do you store entire game binaries and assets in your fucking blockchain? fucking 150gb games in the fucking blockchain? how fucking big is this thing? who hosts it?
No, it seems you and many others fundamentally misunderstand that a blockchain is a distributed ledger as primary functionality, not a data store as such. It stores proof of ownership, that you purchased it from an authorized registered distributor, that’s it. Just to be thorough, all ledgers require further external consensus for functionality.
In this case, a service (who stores and sends the big file) must recognize your token as ownership. What this solves is that when movie x is bought from Amazon and moves to Streamio and then moves to Paramount, you can load your token into Paramount and Paramount can see your token was created by warner brothers, so they can legally serve you Blazing Saddles without contacting Amazon or Streamio, which since has gone out of business.
Today, when they move licenses or whatever else happens, you lose whatever you bought. With a distributed ledger you automatically have proof of purchase to any entity that is able and willing (or legally forced) to use that ledger for validation, and no single entity can just erase your ownership like they can and do today.
The string of bits doesn’t have to be part of an expensive blockchain though, it can just as easily be a generated uuid. In either case, the technology relies on multiple parties honouring your claim.
Hell it could be tied to an email address and nothing else.
Yes it needs support, as almost all blockchains do, they are public consensus models. All it needs is for a token to connect to a specific piece of media. You prove ownership of that token and the streaming service honors your ownership. You move steaming services? They still honor your ownership. Likely also needs legislative support to enforce honoring the token and enforce studios to provide same access to all distributors.
I’m torn between not wanting universal DRM and wanting to break up platform specific DRM.
I think there are 2 types of drm, one is invasive and the other is permissive. Everything needs some sort of Auth and permission drm, and usually it sits in a company dB and if they go under or remove it, you lose Auth. I think that type of system can be better under a blockchain model, moving universal ownership to a decentralized ledger. Services still must recognize the ledger as valid, but then no single provider is the arbiter of your ownership and Auth.
You have a string of bits. If the service shuts down that wont help.
Really appreciate GOG’s model instead, just give me a locally installed executable that doesn’t depend on a storefront.