Your counterexample, “purchase a subscription”, actually undercuts the point you’re trying to make. The goal is honesty here. If you are renting or subscribing, you want to know that up front, in big text, using the simplest possible word. That word is “RENT”.
The issue about the lease business model being bad for society and consumers is also important, but it’s complicated and different from basic truth in advertising.
rent implies a continued fee though - i’m not sure a once off fee to play a game that can be rendered useless at any time covers that? rent would be more like $10/mo rather than $100 for as long as the game is available
Except you can’t make Steam offer their content offline like that. By altering the language they use it effectively makes them more transparent about what you are really paying for. So, in order to use the word “buy” or “purchase” they would have to make the content available offline, or they have to use a different word that essentially means “rent” or “subscribe” cause that is what is actually happening.
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Your counterexample, “purchase a subscription”, actually undercuts the point you’re trying to make. The goal is honesty here. If you are renting or subscribing, you want to know that up front, in big text, using the simplest possible word. That word is “RENT”.
The issue about the lease business model being bad for society and consumers is also important, but it’s complicated and different from basic truth in advertising.
rent implies a continued fee though - i’m not sure a once off fee to play a game that can be rendered useless at any time covers that? rent would be more like $10/mo rather than $100 for as long as the game is available
Funny how you’re only using positive examples and not the reality for the majority of games…
Except you can’t make Steam offer their content offline like that. By altering the language they use it effectively makes them more transparent about what you are really paying for. So, in order to use the word “buy” or “purchase” they would have to make the content available offline, or they have to use a different word that essentially means “rent” or “subscribe” cause that is what is actually happening.
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Steam games usually use steam drm that prevents you from playing without having been on the Internet on the account.