• Kelly@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    9
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    1 month ago

    This article seems to say that it covers only digital items that have an always online requirement.

    https://www.gamefile.news/p/california-ab2426-crew-call-of-duty

    So i think offline games don’t need the warning, but online games, steaming movies, etc do need the warning.

    Edit:

    I looked a bit further and found the bill text:

    https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240AB2426#99INT

    (4) This section does not apply to any of the following:

    […]

    © Any digital good that is advertised or offered to a person that the seller cannot revoke access to after the transaction, which includes making the digital good available at the time of purchase for permanent offline download to an external storage source to be used without a connection to the internet.

    This exception clearly allows for user downloadable installer for a game with offline functionality. But consoles, steam, etc where you don’t get a standalone installer, they look like they will need the warning on all titles.

    • Nibodhika@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 month ago

      Technically that also applies to Steam, since you get a digital good available at the moment of purchase for permanent offline download to an external storage, just copy the game folder and you’re done. It would be the equivalent of a music store place downloading mp3s (and the equivalent to GoG would be selling an .iso to the music CD you can burn whenever you want or an installer that extracts the mp3 to a folder).

      If the game itself has DRM then that would also apply to GoG (yes, there are games with DRM on GoG, there’s just proportionally less of them).

      • Kelly@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        1 month ago

        I had a think about this scenario and I think that if Steam was going to present this argument they would need to document and support this workflow. At the moment the fact that it sometimes works is more of an accident than anything (essentially it’s all just files on a disc and sometimes the files still work if you move them somewhere else).

        But if they document that you can transfer the install data to another location, and identify which titles that applies to? Then I can see a reasonable argument that they qualify.