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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: 0.301s | 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.

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sigwinch28 ◴[11 Jul 25 19:47 UTC] No.44536182[source]▶
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...

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kmerfeld ◴[11 Jul 25 19:56 UTC] No.44536262[source]▶
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

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sofixa ◴[11 Jul 25 20:35 UTC] No.44536556[source]▶
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.

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1. Dylan16807 ◴[12 Jul 25 06:01 UTC] No.44539701[source]▶
> 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.