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

(arstechnica.com)
83 points speckx | 1 comments | 11 Jul 25 19:18 UTC | HN request time: 0.471s | source
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superkuh ◴[11 Jul 25 19:42 UTC] No.44536133[source]▶
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.

replies(2): >>44536182 #>>44537134 #
1. PaulKeeble ◴[11 Jul 25 21:53 UTC] No.44537134[source]▶
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.