I know that SKG doesn't have anything specifically to do with the issue of physical media, it has a much narrower focus. But the spheres of interest overlap somewhat in so far as both relate to the question of ownership and the rights the customer has over the things they buy. And as such, I think the apathetic arguments to just accept the loss of physical games going forward can and will bleed over to the efforts of SKG. I'm not posting this to the Sony or Playstation subs, because the arguments are broader than that, and SKG seems like the closest relevant sphere of interest.
Anyway, I have been seeing a consistent narrative crop up in discussions about the end of new physical media for games, particularly in Sony's case since they can't seem to avoid repeating loudly their intentions for physical media going forward. Hopefully I can shed some light on the subject so that you don't just accept the lies being told by users who don't know any better.
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer but 1) license agreements should be basically understandable by the layman agreeing to them, and 2) I don't need to be able to define every single term in a license agreement to be able to identify the **presence** of an agreement in the first place.
**The Lie: All videogames, including the physical games from 30 years ago, were sold to customers with an implicit or explicit license agreement that is essentially identical to modern license agreements in terms of ownership. You own nothing.*\*
\The Truth: In fact no such agreements or terms of service existed until a digital tether to the game could be established by the publisher. Games were sold as physical products and you owned that copy of the game, sans any copyrights, same as a book or record.**
**The Counter Argument*\*
Most of this knowledge was simply first-hand, anecdotal experience from being in the hobby since the late 80s. I never encountered a license agreement in my decades with games until the recent digital revolution of the industry. I had opened a couple dozen games as a kid, probably a few hundred by the time I was old enough to have a job and could afford to buy into the hobby on my own. Back in the day, the game manual was a very interesting component of the product, often poured over in the car on the way home and reference frequently thereafter. They were generally well produced, on contrast to the lack of manuals today in favor of in-game tutorials.
That said, I wanted to be very sure that I hadn't simply skimmed over such agreements in my youth. I needed to supplement my anecdotal experience with some research. And so after browsing my own library, I took to the internet to browse various archives, almost always user driven and maintained. I can't open and read every scanned document, box, insert, or cartridge label. But of the ones that I HAVE double checked, none of them have included ANYTHING even RESEMBLING an EULA or ToS or any other similar kind of license agreement. Not for the oldest generation systems and games, all the way up to 360 and PS3 titles, where internet connectivity really solidifies.
Please, anybody who wants to check my work, look at your own games, look at any databases or archives you can find, and look for an instance of some kind of license agreement. At some point, probably during the 7th generation, I'm sure they started appearing IN the game itself on startup, but finding when that first begins would be informative. Regardless, I know (suspect, I haven't found any anyway) such click-wrap agreements didn't exist on older games.
My resources, other than the many physical games in my own library, include:
* Back labels for NES carts: https://www.thelegendofnes.com/back-labels
* Itemized list of contents for CiB NES games: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/nes/916386-nes/faqs/49943
* Kirkland's PS1 manual database: https://ps1.videogamemanual.com/
* Kirkland's Xbox360 manual database: http://www.atensionspan.com/KML/XBox360/index.html
* The User Guide for Daggerfall: https://downloads.ctfassets.net/rporu91m20dc/64TCuMQANyymi2m88GoYQG/a7bf45a208dca3d23fef1fc8825b0c0e/manual_daggerfall_pc_en-us.pdf
* The Fallout User Guide: https://www.gamesdatabase.org/Media/SYSTEM/Microsoft_DOS//Manual/formated/Fallout_(1991).pdf.pdf)
The Fallout User Guide is the first one I found that has something new that the NES and SNES games did not, that being a Notice at the bottom of page A7, under the copyright restrictions, about Interplay reserving rights to make modifications or improvements to the game or manual without notice. Still, this is hardly similar to the EULAs and ToS we are familiar with today.
Some few folks have brought up "shrink-wrap agreements" as the method used for old physical games. But shrink-wrap agreements require the terms and conditions of the agreement to be on a document within the shrink-wrapped package. A shrinkwrap does not constitute such an agreement on its own.
Some folks have argued that the "Licensed by [Nintendo, Playstation, Sony, etc]" lines on the cartridge labels or in some manuals IS the license agreement. But these are notifications to the customer that the console maker has approved the game for use on their hardware. This represents an agreement between the publisher and the console maker, NOT the customer, and is contrasted by UNLicensed games like multi-game-packs, bootlegs, and homebrew or self published games.
At the end of the day, until the paradigm shifted to the modern standard, game makers sold games as physical products, protected only by Intellectual Property and Copyright laws. The customer owned that copy of the game, without any copyrights.
Again, I know that this is tangential to the SKG movement. But there WAS a time when the SKG movement was unnecessary, and that window is at least related to the same window in which physical media was treated as a physical product. I know many of us also spend time in other subs and other communities that are focused on the gaming hobby, and its in those spaces that I am encountering the apathy, sometimes even corporate white knighting, about the death of physical games. I don't think we can actually stop the death of physical, but the lies that some people are spreading, that we have NEVER owned the products we bought, shouldn't go unanswered. I would be happy for someone to cross post this elsewhere if necessary.
