<\/p>\n
On November 22nd, 2019. Blizzard announced the development of \u2018Overwatch 2\u2019, the sequel to their highly praised multiplayer game \u2018Overwatch\u2019.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n As far as I’m aware, The idea was pretty well-received; I personally was pretty excited about the news. I had been given Overwatch as a gift from my parents sometime in mid-2016. I had loved the game through my teens and was excited about the potential of a sequel. I then promptly forgot about the concept until I moved home three years later, and abruptly gained a large amount of free time to waste playing online games with my friends.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Once again, I was excited, and even more excited to hear it would be free-to-play. That meant more chances for people to experience a game I’d enjoyed since my teens.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n I\u2019m not sure where I first heard it would \u2018replace\u2019 the original game. It was a rumor, at first. One that, when I repeated it to my family, I was reassured would never actually happen. I assume the assumption being that they couldn\u2019t get away with taking something someone had paid for and replacing it with a different product. I wasn\u2019t convinced. I was unfortunately proven right on October 4th, 2022. When Blizzard announced they would be replacing the game. Upon booting up the launcher Overwatch 2 would overwrite the original game, completely removing it from players\u2019 computers.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n If you can\u2019t feel the horror and disgust that I feel at the prospect, I want you to imagine they\u2019d done this with a classic, like Starcraft. That, instead of a new game to play, they would just overwrite the old one. No backups, and no way for players to return to the original. Not even to play offline just to experience the nostalgia. It\u2019s gone. A segment of history completely removed I understand most people probably don\u2019t consider Overwatch history, and many have rightful criticisms about what it represented in the industry and its effects. but it was important to me. And I purchased it. That\u2019s another important fact.<\/span>,<\/i><\/span>\u00a0with no chance for player-supported servers, because they wanted to funnel more players into their new game as fast as possible.<\/span><\/p>\n Despite Overwatch 1 players paying for the game long before the idea of Overwatch 2 even existed, Blizzard was able to easily remove and \u2018replace\u2019 it with something they have very clearly marketed as an entirely different game without anyone starting a fight. They were able to justify it by saying \u2018Well, you can keep your old characters\u2019 as if the point of the matter isn\u2019t that they just took away something people owned and replaced it with <\/span>something else<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n When the announcement first came out, I expected more of a fuss. This isn\u2019t to say nobody took issue with the situation at all. Overwatch 2 suffers exactly the problems one would expect from a rushed \u2018sequel\u2019 trying to make a quick buck, but I haven\u2019t seen many people talking about the specific issue of them replacing the original<\/span><\/i><\/span> For it to make some sort of splash that they were taking away a product they\u2019d sold. But in retrospect, I can’t be surprised it didn\u2019t. The concept has been slowly introduced over the past decade. As physical media is phased out, and digital media, especially subscription-based services, stand dominant, we\u2019ve learned to accept when things just disappear. In fact, a bigger instance happened not long ago when HBO pulled dozens of well-known and loved TV series from their platform. With no plans to release them as physical media, the only way to access these shows is to pirate them. I am aware this did face backlash, but social consequences don\u2019t mean much to companies like HBO as long as they keep making money.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The fact that Blizzard was able to remove a purchased product from accounts and \u2018replace\u2019 it for their own benefit is a symptom of a bigger issue: the widespread acceptance of renting everything you need.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Which isn\u2019t to say renting things is bad, I like being able to go online and throw some money at my computer to watch a movie. But sometimes, I look at the cost of Spotify Premium and consider how much I\u2019ll be paying them over the rest of my life and I feel vaguely nauseous. In case you\u2019re wondering, for me, the estimate is around $9352.08, assuming they don\u2019t raise the price *and* I make it to my 70s. As a side note, in order for an artist to make a single dollar from Spotify their song has to be streamed roughly 266 times. If I buy the song on Bandcamp the artist makes about a hundred times that in one purchase. And I can then keep the song on my computer permanently, or burn it to a physical disc or USB drive to play whenever I please without worrying it might be removed from the platform. I think I\u2019ve just convinced myself to make a Bandcamp account.<\/span>\u00a0<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n I find myself genuinely nervous at the implications of how easy it was for them to do this. I have friends that still play I haven\u2019t got it in me to try. The idea of removing the old game from my computer makes me a bit sick. I haven\u2019t opened the Battlenet launcher since the game dropped.<\/span><\/i><\/span>, some of whom have already begun falling into the \u2018pay to play\u2019 pit, and new people continue to funnel in by the day At least the lucky bastards who don\u2019t have prepaid phones. Which is yet another gross choice the higher-ups at blizzard have made. Of all solutions to abuse, this is definitely the worst and most exclusionary against people in lower income brackets. Who, unfortunately, if we\u2019re honest with ourselves, aren\u2019t actually a part of blizzards \u2018target player base.<\/span><\/i><\/span>. As far as I\u2019ve heard they\u2019re still turning a profit. Not a single repercussion for their actions. And if one company can take away a game, who’s to say another won\u2019t? This is something of a \u2018slippery slope\u2019 fallacy, but it is shockingly easy for me to imagine waking up one day to find Steam has removed a game from my library. Of course, Steam is generally good about these things; my mom still has a game in her library that stopped being sold about a decade ago. But the fact that it\u2019s not only possible, but even <\/span>acceptable<\/span><\/i> puts me on edge. Maybe Steam wouldn\u2019t, but there are other platforms, and other companies I am ready and willing to believe would replace or even remove a game in a heartbeat if it meant they could get more money out of the situation.<\/span><\/p>\n I don\u2019t have much of a solution to this problem. I could hypothetically call this a Call to Action. Everyone knows the easiest way to get a company to stop doing something is to hit them in the wallet. And if one company gets a slap on the wrist the others will generally back off for a year or two before they push again. But I know I don\u2019t have the audience to make that much noise, and I’m not sure I want all that responsibility. So instead, I’ll call it a reminder.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Digital ownership consistently relies on the whims of the producers, even if it\u2019s on your computer. If it relies on a host service like Steam, Blizzard, Origin, or any other program to run, it\u2019s about as good as a long-term rental. You only own it right up until that service shuts down, or takes it away.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n You are as much of a product to these companies as what you purchase, and it would do us all good to remember that.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On November 22nd, 2019. Blizzard announced the development of \u2018Overwatch 2\u2019, the sequel to their highly praised multiplayer game \u2018Overwatch\u2019.\u00a0 As far as I’m aware, The idea was pretty well-received; I personally was pretty excited about the news. I had been given Overwatch as a gift from my parents sometime in mid-2016. I had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[618,120],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-epilogue","category-videogames"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=54957"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54957\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55318,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54957\/revisions\/55318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}