Why You Don’t Own Your Own Video Games Any More

7. What Does "Ownership" Mean, Anyway?

In the earlier days of the medium, the concept of owning a video game seemed relatively simple - if you paid money for the game cartridge or disc and held possession of it, you owned it.

And as long as you kept the media in good condition and had hardware to play it on, nothing could really change the nature of that ownership dynamic, what with games being a static medium untouched by external forces.

You played the vision that the developers send out into the world, and that was it - for better or worse.

But ownership also expands to more multi-faceted concepts, like the freedom for players to do with their games as they like, within reason of course, such as selling them on or loaning them to a friend.

These ideas, that physical possession and the freedom to pass it on to others equals ownership, is fast going away due to the most significant invention of modern times: the Internet.