Chinese courts allow heirs to inherit accounts of deceased gamers — multiple cases spanning years establish precedent for digital ownership of games, in-game items, and microtransactions
Your kids can inherit your digital game library if you're in China.
https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/big-tech/chinese-courts-allow-heirs-to-inherent-accounts-of-deceased-gamers-multiple-cases-spanning-years-establish-precedent-for-digital-ownership-of-games-in-game-items-and-microtransactionsOpen linkView original on lemmy.zip
12 replies
(looking at my collection of “mature” games in my library)
If you hide it from your list, chances are they'll never find it unless they go looking... In which case, they're probably a kindred soul.
The corporations got their money. Who uses them through that account or lineage should not matter it's like inheriting a car it would be fucked up to not allow your child see the odometer just because a corporation put in proprietary tech in it
The entire article is based on comments written by one random Redditor, btw.
This probably works well enough in China where the lifting of the "one child per family" policy is still relatively recent. What happens when there's more than one offspring interested in taking ownership? I suppose it'll be like any other family squabble over heirlooms, but it's gonna get messy & increase court loads.
Same as any other possession that's not directly mentioned in a will.
Either the beneficiaries come to an agreement (if you let me have the games you can get the ornament of a cow wearing a tutu) or arguments, tears and bitter resentment.
The only difference would seem to be that, unless further laws are changed, you can't sell them on if no one wants them.
Wtf are you talking about that's like a whole nother conversation about inheritance in general
This feels... Wrong somehow but I'm struggling to articulate what problems could arise from it. I think it's something to do with it being a personal license from a distributor instead of a physical collection of the actual game data to be manipulated at the users leisure.
I confess, I have a large library and if I had a kid or relative I'd absolutely like to see that collection put to use, but part of me feels like I knew what I was signing up for when I purchased games online.
I'd like to see people's opinions on this. Maybe I'm framing it all wrong.
Edit:
I concede, thank you for everyone's arguments. I'll be happy to be proven it's a good thing with time.
Just because that’s how corporations frame it don’t mean it SHOULD be that way. Like it doesn’t matter what they want to call it, if I bought something it should be mine and I should be able to pass down my collection I spent money on.
I couldn't disagree more.
Sorry about your adaptive preference for not owning media, but a better world is possible, friend, and this legal precedent merely reaffirms the first sale doctrine that has always applied to other types of media but that lawmakers in your jurisdiction declined to enact as a handout to corporations as new media came along.