When you buy game on steam and it’s discontinued (for example original GTA San Andreas) you can still download it from your library even if it’s no longer available for purchase.
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Lol, contracts don’t trump law. Consumer protection laws exist for a reason. Someone who purchases a product or service has a reasonable expectation of access to the product or service.
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(all) AVB games effectively have the following in their ToU/EULA:
“You are renting the ability to play game and we can for any reason at any time terminate your access to it”
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Yes I did so why can’t I play OW1 if I have paid for that license.
If they start doing that left and right, nobody will be dumb enough to keep buying their games. How can TF1 still exists even after TF2 was released but OW1 can’t?
It definitely doesn’t.
I still have all the steam games that I have paid for even if some have been delisted for new purchases.
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What you have on your PC is just a client that is useless without an external server that hosts the actual game.
You never owned the game.
And?
It is not fault of Steam but the company making the game. Blizzard doesn’t give you even that.
If they actually cared about their customers they would have added offline/LAN mode or just a way to play the game on your own servers.
We know LAN mode exists because it is used in OWL
They would lose money if they give you the ability to create your own servers, and I don’t mean just sales from OW 2 cosmetics, you just crack the game and literally everyone can pirate it and play it for free, other companies start illegaly hosting servers, matchmaking services and making money out of it etc
This isn’t some evil scheme from a greedy company, this is exactly what happen with their previous titles so no wonder they removed it
Apparently not true if you read this
ht tps://linustechtips.com/topic/953835-you-own-the-software-that-you-purchase-and-any-claims-otherwise-are-urban-myth-or-corporate-propaganda/
Also, remember that you earn literally nothing for bootlicking corpos. Yet you still do it. Why?
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Again the software you own is a glorified login screen without an external server that hosts the game
That is not my problem dude.
If going to make a new game actually make a new game not just copy-paste what people have paid for already.
Pushing the same thing can calling it new game is just lazy.
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If you’re just going to ignore what I posted, why bother to respond. The software you own is whatever you downloaded, and anything said to the contrary is corporate propaganda.
Believe me, Blizzard WISHES its Eula can dictate whatever it wants, but the simple fact is that you can’t sign away your rights, and that Eulas can and have been proven to be unlawful. You earn literally nothing by saying “yeah, corpos have all the power. I signed my name, and that means I agreed to whatever the contract said”.
For your own sake, read about it. You’re liable to think “Yeah, I signed the EULA that said ‘blizzard owns all of my organs and my dog’, so they just own my organs and my dog now.”.
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Yeah sure, take the billion dollar company owned by the multitrillion dollar company microsoft to court and say “I didn’t know that they warned me they could shutdown the servers when ever they wanted to because I didn’t read the contract I just signed it”. I’m sure that will hold up great in court
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You didn’t even read what I wrote and are putting words in my mouth.
I’m not denying that you own the client, I’m saying that the client is useless without the server, and the server (or the league client with offline hosting) was never in your possession.
most people know this.
but you all pretend eulas give companies unlimited power when consumer protection laws are a thing.
sadly what they do with ow2 is probably legal but that’s not the point. A lot of “legal” things are still bad and worth protesting.
Oh, I see I have misunderstood your comment. So instead, take this as a rebuttle:
I recognize the client is useless without the server, but you have the assets, and can actually emulate the servers if you know what you’re doing. Its a hassle to do since you’d have to reverse engineer Blizzard servers, but you can certainly do it.
I plan on trying, at least.
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Hey the only reason why WoW classic exists is because people were so passionate about the game and emulated it, be my guest.
Because no billion dollar company has ever been sued and lost before. 
Activision was literally sued for shutting down access to a game and opted to offer refunds knowing they were open to legal action. (Guitar Hero Live).
Reasonable expectation. 2 very important words when it comes to consumer rights. Someone who bought the game, especially recently, has reasonable expectation to access the service.
I feel like this article is about a different kind of situation than what has happened with OW.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but with Steam don’t you download an entire package - the game engine and graphical interface. Which is why in this article, it counts as buying goods rather than a service.
With Overwatch and other online games however, when you ‘buy’ the game you are paying for the client which is just the graphical interface, while the actual game, a copy of the game engine, is never your property because it always sits on a Blizzard server. So as per this article, it counts as a service (which users have agreed can be terminated at any time).
When Netflix removes movies from their selection, people don’t/can’t sue because they ‘bought the movie’. This is the same scenario - you ‘bought’ the Netflix app, but they removed all of the movies.
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Pretty much this.
And they dont. Just like when you purchase a Gym Membership, you dont own the Gym buddy. Read the EULA.
Sure, but if you do that, that is proprietary from Blizzard so you better do it without getting any profit. Otherwise get ready to go on a court.
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The plaintiff withdrew the suit WITHOUT prejudice, because the NAMED plaintiff apparently misused the service. The reason they did it without prejudice was so action could still be taken. Activision preemptively offered refunds as a way to deter future litigation. They knew they were going to get taken back to court and by offering refunds for people who purchased it during those years. The most likely determining factor of the case would have been those who bought it within x amount of time before it shut down, as they a longer expectation of access. By offering refunds to those people, the remaining people would have been hard pressed to prove they didn’t have a reasonable amount of access, or that they “didn’t get what they paid for.”