Belkin shows tech firms getting too comfortable with bricking customers' stuff

This all started with software and because we didn't stop it there it'll keep happening to software that runs hardware.

There was a popular game called "Rocket League" that Psyonix company sold and ran the infrastructure for for many years. But then Epic corporation bought Psyonix for Rocket League's playerbase to bootstrap their proprietary game delivery service. 6 months later everyone who had bought the game for Mac or Linux could no longer play. Epic just stole it from them. No recourse. Not even outrage beyond the effected. It was just accepted as a standard business practice.

Via Wikipedia:

> The developer offered full refunds to the game for macOS and Linux owners regardless of how long they had the game.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_League#Free-to-play_tra...

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/rocket-league-ending-mac-an...

Its less bad that they offered refunds, but why would it that make it ok? If you buy a car, and the company lights it on fire and then offers you a refund is that ok? You'll still have the burnt husk if you choose not to take the refund

They broke something after they sold it

Brutal.

Like the repo man leaving you a tip.

It's hard to take this comparison seriously because Rocket League is a (mostly) online game for which an active connection to active servers (and thus a cost to the developer). Also, there is no burnt husk.

It's like you paying to get lifetime access to a club, the club closing and reimbursing you.

Since when are companies required to run servers for multiplayer? There is always other ways to play multiplayer. At least there used to be but not any more. It is just a thinly veiled excuse to be able to shut it off.

I have tried to keep the Psyonix wikipedia article true to reality if you look at the change history but there are people working for Epic heavily whitewashing it and I didn't want to force (wiki) arbitration or cause a disturbance after the first couple edit/revert battles. The Rocket League one is even harder to keep true.

Basically, they said they were stealing the Mac and Linux Rocket League versions because they wanted to go full directx 10 instead of 9. But the fact that the PS3 is still a first class client running Directx 9 even today shows this is/was a lie. Epic lies quite a bit. In fact when they bought Psyonix they loudly announced there would be no changes, it'd stay rocket league. But of course that lie only lasted 6 months. And now they re-write the wiki pages to pretend it was always the plan.

Anyway, I didn't want a refund. I wanted to keep playing rocket league. And now I cannot play. That's wrong. They bricked my game. And everyone thinks that's A-OK. Just like when they'll brick your modem, or your fridge, or maybe your car. Frankly, having any software in a $thing is a huge risk these days given the status quo.

The Sony playstation 3 was another example where it let you run Linux and then people found a way to use the hardware to its fullest (the coprocessors were locked in Linux) and Sony pulled support. Took some court cases but customers got partial refunds then too. HP also lost a lawsuit on blocking ink jet cartridges too.

I think this law needs to move to basic consumer protection and under the protection of a quango and they have a lot of companies to go after now.

> It's hard to take this comparison seriously because Rocket League is a (mostly) online game for which an active connection to active servers (and thus a cost to the developer).

This is a different situation, but if this was the stop killing games initiative, the answer would be that when you shut down the game you release the server software.

> Also, there is no burnt husk.

The burnt husk is the program on your computer that opens to the menu and then falls over unable to play. That's what you're left with if you don't take the refund.

> It's like you paying to get lifetime access to a club, the club closing and reimbursing you.

That makes it sound like they merely shut down a rocket league hosting service and someone else could provide the same service. They arranged it so they're the only possible way to play rocket league, even though the game runs on my computer using my resources.