When a company says “ownership” they mean over the property itself. Copyright. Only the rights holders “own” the game, only they can make a sequel to the game.
When a player says “ownership” they’re referring to their copy of their game, i.e. their license. No copyright. They do not own the game, they just own a license to experience it, they cannot make a sequel.
People then try to say “well the issue isn’t ownership, it’s DRM”. No. DRM that makes the experience worse for paying customers is annoying, but it’s not the issue at hand. Virtually all your games for all your consoles have some form of DRM, and yet you consider them “owned” in your collection.
What we need to demand is: ownership of a license that grants perpetual access.
We don’t want the license to expire.
We don’t want it to change what it grants us access to after we’ve purchased it.
We don’t want them to stop making the content available because they don’t want to host their servers anymore.
We want the ability to play without needing an internet connection.
If all of that can be guaranteed, then the license is on par with a physical copy.
But until we have legislation forcing it to be the case, we have to assume they fully intend to take your money and one day not be willing to provide what you paid for.
We’re overloading the term “ownership”.
People then try to say “well the issue isn’t ownership, it’s DRM”. No. DRM that makes the experience worse for paying customers is annoying, but it’s not the issue at hand. Virtually all your games for all your consoles have some form of DRM, and yet you consider them “owned” in your collection.
What we need to demand is: ownership of a license that grants perpetual access.
If all of that can be guaranteed, then the license is on par with a physical copy.
But until we have legislation forcing it to be the case, we have to assume they fully intend to take your money and one day not be willing to provide what you paid for.