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Showing posts from April, 2019

The Historical Impact of a Profit-First (and Only) Video Game Industry

Anyone who plays video games and hangs around me long enough will eventually stumble across the conversation wherein I try, often inexpertly, to explain my immutable position against Digital Distribution (DD), Down-Load Content (DLC), Digital Rights Management (DRM), game patching within closed systems (i.e. on consoles) and similar mechanisms which either expressly or coincidentally erode a player's ownership and ultimately control of their own gaming experiences. " Internet Gating " is how I have decided to refer to the cadre of mechanisms which exist to force video game players to connect on the Internet to some "gatekeeper" to acquire permission to access or use the software they have paid for.  Discussing the Right Things I often find people are only prepared to sympathize with anti-Internet Gating notions on behalf of those with bandwidth limitations - people in rural areas, with suffocating bandwidth caps, or soldiers overseas with no Internet acc