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THE VIDEO SHELF · games as a service

"Games as a service" is fraud.

Ross Scott of Accursed Farms makes a 76-minute argument that selling video games as a service is a form of consumer fraud. He lays out legal arguments that games are goods, covers ownership and programmed obsolescence, and discusses game preservation.

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Why HN readers recommended it

It is the go-to explanation of why games that die when servers shut down harm consumers, and it is repeatedly cited in Stop Killing Games and game-delisting threads.

This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.

Video & recommendation details

Creator / channel
Accursed Farms
Topic
games as a service
Format
commentary
Level
general
HN recommenders in dataset
5
HN mentions in dataset
10
Recommendation years in dataset
2019–2024

These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.

From the original HN conversations

Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.

  • See "Games as a service is fraud": [VIDEO] If you have an hour, I'd highly recommend giving this a watch. It is really sad to see any form of media die forever at the whim of a corporation. Games are especially prone to this unfortunately

    flafla2 on Hacker News · 2019-12
    In Discontinued Microsoft Products

  • The problem is that for game ROMs specifically, opening them to the public domain devalues potential opportunities for re-releases and remasters. The Nintendo virtual console service and S/NES classic are prominent examples. So it isn't so simple that there is "no harm done" by forcing …

    flafla2 on Hacker News · 2020-03
    In Internet Archive responds: Why we released the National Emergency Library

  • Ross from Accursed Farms has some great videos * about exactly this phenomenon and why it is so detrimental to gaming culture in general. * [VIDEO]

    DrSiemer on Hacker News · 2021-06
    In Many Need for Speed Games Are Abiut to Be Erased by EA

Summaries, classifications and recommendation records are from the HackerTube source dataset. Read about this library and its limitations.