We don’t. That’s just the normal way most people pronounce numbers with a decimal point. The big exception is prices: $1.32 is often pronounced “one thirty two”.

My point is they never have and never will.

I think Ubisoft is clearly in the wrong, but you’re not making a good case. You’re conflating very different meanings of the word “own”.

In terms of legal ownership, only the copyright holder owns the intellectual property, including the right to distribute and license it. When a consumer “buys” a piece of media, they’re really just buying a perpetual license for their personal use of it. With physical media, the license is typically tied to whatever physical object (disc, book, ROM, etc.) is used to deliver the content, and you can transfer your license by transferring the physical media, but the license is still the important part that separates legal use from piracy.

When you pirate something, you own the means to access it without the legal right to do so. So, in the case at hand, players still “own” the game in the same sense they would if they had pirated it. Ubisoft hasn’t revoked anyone’s physical access to the bits that comprise the game; what they’ve done is made that kind of access useless because the game relies on a service that Ubisoft used to operate.

The real issue here is that Ubisoft didn’t make it clear what they were selling, and they may even have deliberately misrepresented it. Consumers were either not aware that playing the game required Ubisoft to operate servers for it, or they were misled regarding how long Ubisoft would operate the servers.

Ultimately I think what consumers are looking for is less like ownership and more like a warranty, i.e. a promise that what they buy will continue to work for some period of time after they’ve bought it, and an obligation from the manufacturer to provide whatever services are necessary to keep that promise. Game publishers generally don’t offer any kind of warranty, and consumers don’t demand warranties, but consumers also tend to expect punishers to act as if their products come with a warranty. Publishers, of course, don’t want to draw attention to their lack of warranty, and will sometimes actively exploit that false perception that their products come with a perpetual warranty.

I think what’s really needed is a very clear indication, at the point of purchase, of whether a game requires ongoing support from the publisher to be playable, along with a legally binding statement of how long they’ll provide support. And there should be a default warranty if none is clearly specified, like say 10 years from the point of purchase.

Or, ownership itself is a service. Rights mean nothing if nobody enforces them, and that includes property rights.

Maybe try not habitually exaggerating? People who don’t know you are just gonna take you at your word.

The smugness of parents who say people who choose differently are selfish is a great example of how parenthood can make someone a worse person.

It’s not guaranteed you’ll enjoy it or be good at it. That would be a huge gamble to take with my own life, but if there’s a kid involved I’m gambling with their life, too. I could never do something like that in good conscience.

You sound like someone with undiagnosed ADHD.

And you sober up after a while and gain the ability to evaluate whether the experience was worthwhile. I’d try being a parent if I only had to commit to about 12 hours of it at a time.

My parents took me to a lot of places as a kid to make good memories for me. It didn’t work. My whole childhood is mostly just a big blur in my memory.

So nobody can arrive at any conclusions about complex topics? That’s like saying we can’t quantify global warning because climate science is complex.

Alas, the longer the stick is, the floppier it gets.

It’s a nice bonus but too short the be a full game.

Definitely not a real number.

That’s some serious copium, and the other replies are worse. “If you’re not growing you’re dying” is bullshit when you control a large portion of the potential market, but not when you’re a bit player. Being less popular than a manifestly shitty platform like Reddit is not a flex and not a sign of long-term health.

They can’t ban a MAC address. They don’t have any way to find it.

Bowties have been out of fashion for so long they just look silly most of the time. That seems like exactly what you’d want for a character who’s supposed to be whimsical.

Also a necktie doesn’t go with a tophat. For reasons I can’t explain, that kind of incongruity looks more accidental than it does whimsical.

Good for you, but I like being invited to parties.

Guess what? I still use Reddit, too, because content on Lemmy is extremely scarce in comparison. Mastodon is likewise a fringe network. I’ve barely even heard the name Friendica so I can be certain there are approximately zero people I know there. Shopping local is great when local businesses actually put their prices and inventory online, but they rarely do.

For Xitter, BlueSky is drop-in replacement that’s superior in most respects. I’m not aware of any equivants for Facebook or Amazon.