[preommr]

> So why is it OK for a software developer to just arbitrarily decide to flip a switch and remove my ability to use a product I paid for?

I see this argument repeated, and it's made exactly like this where it sets up a strawman and then brings up software.

No one is coming into your computer to repossess your software.

They are either turning off their servers, OR they are ending a subscription.

If you have a bus pass, you can do anything you want with the card. Your chisels being 50 years old, has nothing to do with you being able to ride the bus forever just because you bought a one-month pass.

[cwillu]

> They are either turning off their servers

…that are unnecessarily being checked by the local software before the local software will run the local offline functions.

[preommr]

That is irrelevant to the topic of ownership since you bought the product, you can now update the code.

If you want, you can now change that behavior.

Whether that's allowed by the TOS and what the consequences to that are is also a separate issue. At that point, people shouldn't buy the product if they disagree with the conditions.

[JacobKfromIRC]

> At that point, people shouldn't buy the product if they disagree with the conditions.

I think a problem with this idea is that terms of service can be difficult to understand. For example a lot of licenses or terms of service forbid "reverse engineering" entirely. In my mind, "reverse engineering" is just trying to understand something based on observing what it does, and even though a legal agreement is probably using a more strict definition, how am I supposed to know where the boundary is? "Reverse engineering" isn't usually defined in the agreement itself. And if what I want to do is considered "reverse engineering", it might not be legally enforceable anyway.

Sometimes I buy a physical object, take it home, and then open it and find conditions that I would have disagreed with if I knew about them. I've noticed this with books, but the same could happen with software. I don't know if conditions like that would be legally enforceable, but I think the complexity of understanding this makes individual decisions about what conditions to accept a poor solution to what Stop Killing Games is trying to solve.

The Steam Subscriber Agreement [1] seems to prohibit reverse engineering games (referred to as "content" in the agreement), but I guess I'm misunderstanding it because some GPL games are on Steam (e.g. SuperTux [2]).

I agree that people shouldn't buy a product if they disagree with the conditions, but I think this is too complicated for most people to do for every product. Maybe some of these conditions should be illegal to even put in a terms of service, even if they already aren't enforceable.

[1] https://store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement

[2] https://store.steampowered.com/app/1572920/SuperTux/

[trinsic2]

No you should be clear that its not purchased product but a subscription. Don't expect people to buy into the model that people can take away your right to use a product as you wish.