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With physical sales being phased out this is a topic that's only going to get bigger, and likely more heated. Amazon are already fiddling with peoples ebooks and steam now warns you're only buying a 'license'.

At some point something will affect enough of the masses that it provokes a stronger reaction. When your average person 'buys' a game, they (quite reasonably) expect to be able to play it. No matter what the 15000 words t&cs say.

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That's true. Australia's a bit of a hold-out in that regard:https://infinitelives.substack.com/p/australia-is-defying-gamings-digital?utm_source=publication-search (will need to update this piece at some stage).

But yeah, digital-only gaming is not going away, and the push to portable (Switch, Steam Deck ect) will only accelerate it.

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Nice read, it will be interesting to see the ACCC report next month. Anyway, I’m off to play a game I don’t own

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I'll keep an eye on it! Will totally get buried by the impending election.

However, it will likely be very focused on policing major tech platforms (social media, streaming platforms) with gaming an adjunct to this. Gaming-related stuff was half a page as part of a massive terms of reference doc.

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It would be great to see some movement around access termination. I'm still salty about my copy of Doom that got removed from my Xbox account 20 years ago.

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