In regards to games, music, or any time of digital product license that involves the thought of us "purchasing" it but its not a purchase, but rather a "license ":
Stores like Steam or Apple, etc, should change the button wording from "purchase", "buy", "get", "acquire", etc, to "rent" , as it properly describes what the current product one is spending money on is, where the current wording does not.
As a result of the current wording, if for whatever reason an "account" that holds a "purchase" of a digital product would get banned/deleted/revoked/etc, where there are "purchases" of one or more digital product within a reasonable time-frame and hasn't been downloaded by the user, then that would amount to proper theft.
Once a stores change their word to "rent" as a correct term, they'd also need to include the timing of the rent, where in most cases it would be something along the lines of "indefinitely until something happens and then its suddenly gone without an obligation of a notice".
Once this change happens, they would also announce and notify every user prior to this change that all (or most) their previous "purchases" have been converted to a purchasable item, and they have up to 1 to 3 years (to X date / Y time) to download their whatever they've "purchased", at which point the store doesn't have any legal repercussion if something happens and they deny you the ability to download the product or even have it removed from your account for whatever reason.
Now, for products with "purchase": you'd buy it, have a limited number of downloads of the file, and have a specific time window for the store to be obligated to give you so that you can download said product. Once all store obligations have been met/depleted/expired, the store can do what I mentioned in the previous paragraph.
With these changes, this would properly define and differentiate between an actual "purchase" and a "license" (to be under the umbrella of "rent"). One would be proper ownership while the other wouldn't be.
It's also worth noting that if you purchase a product, specifically a good, then that's that, however, if its a good with a service, the "Service" part of it is not something you'd own. The only thing you'd own after a purchase is the good, not service.
#gaming #gamestr #music #art #software #digitalgoods