I used to rent VHS tapes and DVDs to watch movies for years. I never bought a VHS or a DVD in my life, and I watched hundreds of movies in those formats. Same thing for SNES games. Most of them I played after renting their cartridges for a weekend.
The only difference now is that the publishers are renting their products directly to us and making this their main source of income, making owning the products harder (or just plain impossible). But most third-world boys like me are used to this. I would never own official stuff anyway but I still have been consuming their content for decades.
I don’t believe renting by itself is bad; however, the digital media delivery method is sus. It’s so new, will it still be accessible 20y from now? Probably not without a more complex method.
Is a rent-based economic system something new?
I used to rent VHS tapes and DVDs to watch movies for years. I never bought a VHS or a DVD in my life, and I watched hundreds of movies in those formats. Same thing for SNES games. Most of them I played after renting their cartridges for a weekend.
The only difference now is that the publishers are renting their products directly to us and making this their main source of income, making owning the products harder (or just plain impossible). But most third-world boys like me are used to this. I would never own official stuff anyway but I still have been consuming their content for decades.
I don’t believe renting by itself is bad; however, the digital media delivery method is sus. It’s so new, will it still be accessible 20y from now? Probably not without a more complex method.