4w ago

Reminder that you do not own digital games

Hi there, We removed Dark and Darker from sale on the Epic Games Store on March 5 in consideration of a court decision in Korea between Nexon and the game's publisher, IRONMACE. On November 1, 2025, we will be removing Dark and Darker from your library, at which point it will no longer be playable via the Epic Games Store.
Effective immediately, players can no longer purchase Redstone Shards or the Legendary Status upgrades via the Epic Games Store. Players can continue to use the Redstone Shards that they have previously purchased until November 1, 2025.
We will issue a refund to all players who have purchased the Legendary Status upgrade. Refunds will be issued to the player’s original payment method, and where that’s not possible, players will receive a refund to their Epic account balance. We are unable to provide refunds on Redstone Shards.
If you have not received a refund by July 1, please contact player support.
Thank you,
The Epic Games Store team

77 comments

Reminder that you do not own digital games
That is not universally true. On GOG for example you can download all your games, so things like this could not happen there. Sure, you still technically purchase a license and do not actually buy the games, but for all intents and purposes this is still the closest you get to actually owning the games.
- They don't have DRM. That's not the same as owning the game. If you don't back up the games or installers yourself, and GOG goes under, you lose access to your library the same as Epic or Steam going away.
  You can back up your Steam and Epic games, too. You just need to be able to access your account to verify your license for most titles (but not everything; loads of games do not use Steam or Epic's DRM, have no online checks to verify anything, and you can just copy the installation folder to another machine to play the game). But you can also easily crack both of their DRM to skip the online checks even if they do use it.
  This goes for physical media as well. You own the disk; you do not own the software on said disk. The software on the physical media could still have an online check to see if you are a license holder (this is what CD-Keys are used for) and block you from installing/running the software, despite it being on your own CD/DVD. I am pretty sure I myself have games on disk that can not be installed because the online verification servers no longer exist, so the only way to install them is with cracks.
  
  They don’t have DRM. That’s not the same as owning the game.
  That's why I mentioned that you purchase a license. That has also always been true even if you "bought" a game as a physical copy in a store. A DRM-free game is still the closest thing you get to owning a game.
  If you don’t back up the games or installers yourself, and GOG goes under, you lose access to your library the same as Epic or Steam going away.
  I have heard this argument before, but I really don't get it. Of course you could lose your files if you don't download them. I'd say that's so obvious it isn't even worth mentioning. If you lose or destroy your physical copy of a game you also lose access to it. Pretty obvious.
  
  So you're saying torrenting and seeding is basically a moral obligation?
  
  Depending on the era of the game, you might well own a copy of a game on a disk, just like you own a copy of a book when you buy a book. Weaselling out of first-sale-doctrine stuff came a long time after people started buying video games. A century ago, publishers were trying exactly the same thing with books, and depending on the country, either legislation was introduced that made it explicitly illegal, or the courts determined that putting a licence agreement in a book just meant that the customer got a copy of a licence agreement with their book, not that they were bound by its terms.
  
  You own your individual copy of the game software, end of. It doesn't fucking matter if it's on a disc or a digital download.
- It's not ever true. It is always a lie pushed by copyright-maximalist shysters who hope the public is too cowed to call them on their bullshit.
- Sure you get a DRM-free license on GOG, but for many games you are still dependent on online servers for authentication, which can be shut down at any time rendering your access null and void. The only recourse is technically "hacking" a game a creating local servers which is both against terms of service and against the law in some countries.
  
  online servers for authentication
  I am not aware of any game on GOG that requires an online server for authentication. I'm not saying no such thing exists - I don't own every single game on GOG, but that would go against the whole DRM free thing. Care to name a few games that do this? I don't mean games that have an online mode that require a server, but games that just require authentication against an online server to be able to play the game.
When steam takes games off the store they let you still download them. Epic just sucks.
- They are doing refunds resulting in issues from a lawsuit.
  How is this epic bad?
  It was pulled from Steam years ago due to another lawsuit
  https://www.gamesradar.com/dark-and-darker-has-been-pulled-from-steam/
  
  Yes, but steam didn't remove it from your library
My opinion is once I've paid for a game, piracy is on the table for that game if anything happens that prevents me from playing the copy I purchased.
- Not just your opinion, it's the law in some places.
  
  Which places?
- This is a multiplayer freemium game though, I don't think there are any cracked servers for it, and supposedly there are options for Epic users to retain their accounts with things they've bought (the game is also apparently kind of p2w).
It's a multiplayer freemium game. Even if they let you keep your "copy" of it, servers will be down and the game will not be playable anyways. At least they offer a refund.
- Multiplayer online games used to allow you to self-host so there was no obligatory centralised server. The game need not be deleted, that was purely a business decision.
  
  I remember when you could be a listen server or run your own dedicated server using the freely available executable. Been a while since I've seen anything like that
- The game would have gone offline eventually anyway. Most people get nothing when that inevitably happens. Some games flip to an offline only version, but that's very rare.
  Hell, I bought single player offline games from the Play store for my phone, and they no longer seem to exist. RIP Rayman Jungle Run.
  
  Perpetuum official servers went down years ago, so they open source the server and the game lives on. Free on steam
- Two crimes, then.
I'll give them props that they are going to refund owners for the bit they can, I would have expected most stores so to go "oh well! we have been ordered to remove it, sucks to be you."
You do not own physical games either. It’s just harder for the publisher to revoke a license for a physical game but legally there is little difference.
- Nintendo: "hold my beer"
  Game key cards are the stupidest idea I have seen in a long time.
  
  You mean the thing Sony/MS set the precedent for under the name Smart Delivery 5 years ago? In a physical media form factor that's cheaper to produce...
- Not true. With older physical games which fit on the CDs/DVDs you by law owned your copy and had full ownership over it to do whatever you wanted.
  That's the difference between license and owning.
  
  That's the difference between license and owning.
  No, when you own a game, you can make copies and sell them. That is because owning the game means you own the copyright to the game.
  If you are not the owner of the IP (which you aren’t, unless you own the company that made the game), then the only way to legally play the game is for the actual owner to provide you with some kind of license. If you don’t have a license then the default copyright rules apply which means you aren’t legally allowed to have or play a copy.
  Your license is also limited and doesn’t allow you to ‘do whatever you want’. Try selling copies and see how quickly you get sued. You can’t even do what you want with your single copy. Go buy a bunch of physical games and start a game rental business. Or buy a bunch of physical games and open a game cafe where people can play ‘your’ games. Your license doesn’t allow you to do that.
  
  What? That's explicitly false. Grab nearly any instruction booklet for physical media, at least for any from 1990 or later. There are explicit sections laying out that you have licensed the content. 35 years ago.
  In another comment on this post, someone pointed out that IBM began software licensing in the 50s. So... 75 years ago.
  How far back are you going here?
  For stuff like game carts/discs, VHS, and DVDs they simply had no way of enforcing the license terms, and the terms much more often included clauses for transference (lending, resale).
  By law, it was almost always a license. That was the entire push behind the old attempts to criminalize backup devices and emulation (the bleem! case is good to read up on).
  No arguments about how things worked out in day to day life, but a lot of shit was far more of a legal grey area that no one cared to persue. It wasn't as much of a difference of legal rights.
  Edit: Well shit, I might be wrong about this. A quick search of the Pokemon Blue Instruction Booklet on the Internet Archive has a section toward the end about copying/backups and not being allowed to rent the game out wirhout approval, but nothing about the license for use.
  That said, I'm certain I've seen licensing terms in multiple instruction books from that decade. Maybe it was in the secondary black and white booklet that was generic but came with every GB cart? Don't know where mine are, or if I even still have those.
  Ok, checking my physical stuff. Ape Escape for PS1 has no licensing terms in the manual. Just warranty. Great game btw, I'm due for a replay.
  Bubsy 3D is next in my collection of PS1 games still CIB, and it does though. Last page forbids transference or resale. Somebody better call that retro game store I bought it from for the lols.
  By the way, Bubsy 3D isn't even worth it for the laughs. Not "so bad it's good". Just "so bad it's bad". It cribs the weird control style from Jumping Flash, but does such a worse job with it.
  So it looks like the licensing thing may just be case by case. That would explain why some people insist there was licensing terms, and others insist there wasn't.
Steam has proven to be a far, far, far more capable and stable repository for my games that I could be ... since May 2006. I got Steam because that's how you bought Half Life 2.
Ya know what? I can still play Half Life 2. I've never had the slightest problem accessing any Steam game other than Ubisoft crap, and now I don't buy Ubi.
Add it up, man. That's 19 years of gaming. 151 games. And I have access to every bit of it, at my whim.
For some basic comparison, I have a couple digital pictures that old. A handful. And its shocking that I managed to keep track of them that long. An accident, really.
Steam does the job of safeguarding my games much better than I can.
- Hate to think what will happen when Gaben retires.
  
  Piracy, in a word
- This isn't exclusive to epic. Steam has had games removed as well.
  
  19 years. And the only bad part was Ubi. That's it.
  Honestly, with a record like that, why would I care that Steam has had games removed?
  And, it occurs to me, in 19 years, how could they not have had games removed?
I mean to be fair, as the court determined, the people making this game stole parts of the game to sell to you in the first place, so this was piracy with more steps. I feel like the correct action would have been for the store to stop selling the game, the people that made money be forced to give that money to the people that were harmed by the steeling of the content. I guess it's a bad look on Epic for them too to keep money made from this and maybe they are just trying to avoid being drawn into this ordeal by doing it this way. Legal systems in other countries can be a bit more precarious than what we expect.
But yeah, it's a dark precedent. Remove them from my library so I can't redownload them from Epic? Never see updates? Maybe even not ever launch through Epic's app? Sure. I get that.
I really wish these stores had better simple language right in the "buy now" buttons. (Like, for example, "Rent now!")
I guess Nexon wasn't happy with $6 million because the court found Dark & Darker wasn't copyright infringement, but was an infringement of 'trade secrets'.
If I remember 2023 correctly, Nexon decided to cut the game at the end of development and dumpster their work. So the devs left and finished the game on their own. Since Nexon never actually made/finished/released the game they couldn't claim copyright.
https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/dark-and-darker-developer-did-not-commit-copyright-infringement-court-rules-but-has-to-pay-nexon-nearly-usd6-million-anyway/
I do, because I have loads of them on disc and carts still.
Sure do. They're on my disk and without DRM or removed DRM.
You own things you buy.
This is theft.
Anyone rolling their eyes and performing apologism can fuck off.

77 comments