Hooray For Licenses! Update Strips 17 Songs From Steam Users' Purchased Copies Of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
from the like-using-a-time-machine-to-raid-a-CD-collection dept
Part One Billion in "You Don't Own What You Pay For," the ongoing saga in which paying customers purchasing "licenses" find themselves in possession of products inferior to those purchased physically or, worse, to those never purchased at all (i.e., "pirates").
You might have noticed Steam downloading a sizeable update for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas over the weekend and wondered what that was about. A fancy secret tying into GTA V's return to the west coast, perhaps? Not quite. The patch added support for XInput controllers like the Xbox 360 pad, which is nice, but also removed seventeen songs from various radio stations. No more angsting out and gunning it across Gant Bridge in the wrong lane listening to Killing in the Name, I'm afraid.There's no such thing as a perpetual or "forever" license, not when it comes to content. RockstarNexus has the full list, which seems to include the same 17 songs removed from the iOS versions prior to release. IPhone/iPad users will know these songs are missing going in. But those who purchased the game through Steam are only finding this out after the fact. Rockstar released no patch notes and any account set to auto-update went ahead and stripped content right out of purchasers' games.
It's not like Rockstar didn't have options. It has dealt with music licensing issues before, but never in a way that has affected previously purchased games.
When music rights expired for some songs in GTA: Vice City, Rockstar left them in for folks who already owned it then made a separate version without them for new purchasers. It's pretty unpleasant that they didn't do the same here too.This would have been the right way to handle this. Bundling in content removal with various bug fixes and notifying no one ahead of time is terrible way to treat paying customers. Add to that the fact that the pushed update seems to be responsible for a number of deleted/bricked saves, and you've got a bit of a PR problem on your hands.
But underneath it all lies the absurdity of licensing. Rockstar licensed songs from labels only to see them expire more quickly than the game's marketability. This put it in the position of having to retroactively alter its game, and it was those who purchased nothing more tangible than a license who were negatively affected. Sure, Rockstar will never be able to "own" the recordings used in its game, but it seems like purchasers should be able to keep their purchased goods intact, even if the purchased item is nothing more than ones and zeros scattered across a variety of storage devices.
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Filed Under: copyright, grand theft auto, licenses, music, ownership, removals, you don't own what you pay for
Companies: rockstar
Reader Comments
The First Word
“What the patch does
-removes 18 songs("Critical Beatdown", "Running Down A Dream", "Woman To Woman", "You Dropped A Bomb On Me", "Yum Yum", "Running Away", "I Don't Give A f*ck", "Express Yourself", "Killing in the Name of", "Hellraiser", "Ring My Bell", "Personal Jesus", "Don't Let It Go To Your Head", "Express Yourself". "Rock Creek Park", "Grunt", "Soul Power '74" and "The Payback")
-revokes all mods created for San Andreas on PC
-deletes all of your previous save files
-removes 1280x700 resolution
-has various textures missing and things like foilage completely removed
Source: Luneth's review on the Steam Store Page
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Really, respect works both ways and the company-consumer path has been being neglected far too often.
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If after buying something they can just go in and remove content, tell me what I am buying cause it sure doesn't appear to be owning a game. Remind me why I should pay at all?
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What I hear out of this is less and less want to license anything that is form this decade for a game or movie. As far as I am concerned they are cutting their own throats on this feature enhancement after licensing.
If after licensing something they can just go in and enhance content, tell me what I am licensing cause it sure doesn't appear to be owning a game. Remind me why I should pay at all?
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FTPFY. Oh, and while I'm at it, have a report vote on me, shill.
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did we get a credit too?
So is it ok for Corporations to steal from us?
I could care less when license expires, I have no input either way but if my "purchase" is less then when I paid, I should get a form of refund. Yes it sux for steam, but how the fuck is that MY problem??
(class action lawsuit seem in order for this crap to stop)
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Re: did we get a credit too?
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Re: did we get a credit too?
And if you don't like it then you can always go work for Apple and have Tim Cook push you off a roof in China.....
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Re: did we get a credit too?
I know nobody reads the fine print, but did they actually put something in to allow them to pull this stunt? 'Cause if they didn't, they broke their own contract, and that could definitely be used in a (class action) lawsuit against them!
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Bummer..
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I can understand such things in a previous era where people didn't know they were going to be watched after their first run, let alone decades hence, but it's a dumb move in today's market. Just licence the music and continue collecting more royalties if the resulting product has a long shelf life...
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In my case, at least, these publishers have lost money simply by having an expiry date on their music licencing.
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https://xkcd.com/488/
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What about any songs someone purchases legally, how long before they have to buy them again? If a game can be "updated", what about an itunes account? You don't own the music right? Licenses don't last forever right? Don't they usually have something in the fine print about how the terms can change at any time without notice?
This is why I never use any sort of cloud based service. Always have hard copies, so you will have what you paid for.
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Actually, that can happen with a bluray disk. It would not write it back to the disk, but an internet-connected bluray player can download updated content that replaces as the disk plays.
What about any songs someone purchases legally, how long before they have to buy them again? If a game can be "updated", what about an itunes account?
Obviously they can jam U2 content into an account and pull it back out (well, I guess they had trouble pulling it back out...), so this has sort-of already happened. If Apple went under and shut down their servers (which has happened with smaller companies that offer online services) you would lose what you have in iTunes.
This is why I never use any sort of cloud based service. Always have hard copies, so you will have what you paid for.
Ha! Good luck with that. There are things that you simply cannot get a hard-copy of now. Hard-copies degrade (look up the expected life of a CD and then go replace all of your 90's catalog because the disks are going bad). We are all screwed.
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http://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2013/09/26/call-kurtis-why-your-samsung-blu-ray-player-may-not -play-your-movies/
they can update the player, and make the player "obsolete", or ban the disc.
Now i will be lazy....
Amazon "removed" a book (1984) a few years ago...but gave money back
Sony removed a (highly interesting) feature from the PS3...and rewarded everyone with a free game. a better deal would have been a refund of all ps3 equipment.
i remember a post on techdirt about a guy who moved a million dollar machine from one corner to the other corner, and because he didn't call and get permission, he lost support. the machine's gps ratted him out.
all of the sudden now, omega watches aren't allowed to be resold (copyright protection)
fun times....you don't really own it even though you paid for it.
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Steamed at Steam
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Re: Steamed at Steam
NEVER PAY FULL PRICE!
Its going to be a 50% discount at least before I purchase.
Now at GOG.com I pay full price because that play is just awesome and I would like to support that model. I went and bought FTL from GOG even though it was more expensive just to support it.
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What the patch does
("Critical Beatdown", "Running Down A Dream", "Woman To Woman", "You Dropped A Bomb On Me", "Yum Yum", "Running Away", "I Don't Give A f*ck", "Express Yourself", "Killing in the Name of", "Hellraiser", "Ring My Bell", "Personal Jesus", "Don't Let It Go To Your Head", "Express Yourself". "Rock Creek Park", "Grunt", "Soul Power '74" and "The Payback")
-revokes all mods created for San Andreas on PC
-deletes all of your previous save files
-removes 1280x700 resolution
-has various textures missing and things like foilage completely removed
Source: Luneth's review on the Steam Store Page
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Re: What the patch does
PC Gamers got HOSED on this update.
And people wonder why I stick with consoles.
P.S. Nothing wrong with gaming on the PC, I just prefer consoles, that is all.
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Re: Re: What the patch does
Mostly, Rockstar is crippling the luddites and providing an exemplary indicator that it no longer gives much concern about the experience of its customers.
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Re: Re: What the patch does
This scares me as I'm a collector of consoles. I still have an original NES that still works. Can the same be said about the PS4 in 20 years (or the Wii U as I've been worried about recently)?
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Re: Re: What the patch does
It's true that this hasn't happened on one of those platforms yet, but with digital distribution become the preferred method and even disc-based content often getting patched even before you can play it for the first time, it probably will. Unless you never connect your console to the internet, you're definitely still vulnerable to this.
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Re: Re: Re: What the patch does
And given the increasing penchant for companies to put out broken, bug filled games and patch them over time, if you don't connect your console to the internet, your game is likely going to have a good number of bugs and glitches. A lose/lose situation.
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PS3- or can you install linux again now?
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Re: What the patch does
Because the 'patch' seems to do pretty much nothing but make the game worse.
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...right?
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Never buy another Rockstar game.
I won't.
Or at most, if a game is really super-duper cool, I won't pay more than $5 for a "complete edition" that no DRM other than Steam.
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And then they wonder why their games dont sell enough on PC.
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Why license songs?
Is it really that much cheaper to use a licensed song than to pay a band to record a song which RockStar would own? I would think paying for their own band would significantly reduce the risk that they would have to remove songs down the road.
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Grand Theft Auto 5 Trailer PC Gameplay
Grand Theft Auto 5 Trailer PC Gameplay
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