Every few months, the gaming community finds itself having the same argument.
A publisher removes a game from a storefront.
A live-service game shuts down.
An account gets banned.
Someone realizes that the game they paid $70 for isn’t really theirs in the way they thought.
The response is understandable:
“I bought the game. I should own it.”
From a consumer’s perspective, that makes perfect sense.
But there’s a piece of history that’s often missing from the conversation.
The gaming industry didn’t invent software licensing. It inherited it.
Products Have Owners
When you buy a physical product, ownership is straightforward.
You buy a hammer.
You own the hammer.
You can lend it to a friend, sell it at a garage sale, or give it away.
That principle is reflected in the First Sale Doctrine under 17 U.S.C. § 109, which generally allows the owner of a lawfully made copy of a copyrighted work to sell or otherwise dispose of that particular copy without the copyright owner’s permission.
For decades, this was also true of movies on VHS, DVD, and Blu-ray. You owned the disc even though the studio still owned the copyright.
So why didn’t software stay that way?
Software Was Different
Software looked like a product.
It came in a box.
It sat on a store shelf.
It had a price tag.
But software behaved nothing like a traditional consumer product.
Unlike a hammer, software had bugs.
Unlike a television, it required patches.
Unlike a book, it had security vulnerabilities.
Unlike a refrigerator, it stopped working when operating systems and hardware changed.
Most importantly, software could be copied perfectly in seconds.
As software became more important, the industry ran into problems that traditional product law wasn’t designed to solve.
Developers needed a way to define:
- what support customers would receive,
- whether updates were included,
- who was responsible for data loss,
- whether the software could be installed on multiple computers,
- and how businesses could deploy thousands of copies across an organization.
A simple retail sale couldn’t answer all of those questions.
Contracts could.
Licensing Was an Adaptation
It’s tempting to think software companies simply decided they preferred licensing.
History suggests something more interesting.
The industry encountered pressure after pressure:
- widespread piracy,
- expensive support obligations,
- increasingly complex software,
- customer expectations for ongoing updates,
- security maintenance,
- enterprise licensing,
- and growing liability when software failed.
Licensing wasn’t adopted because it was fashionable.
It was adopted because it addressed many of these problems in a single legal framework.
Developers could define warranties.
Limit liability.
Specify installation rights.
Control redistribution.
Offer maintenance.
Provide upgrades.
The environment rewarded companies that used contracts to manage these risks.
The Law Didn’t Create Licensing
By the time software licensing reached the courts, companies had already been relying on license agreements for years.
The courts were asked a different question:
Are these agreements legally enforceable?
The answer gradually became yes.
In Apple Computer, Inc. v. Franklin Computer Corp., the courts confirmed that software was protected by copyright, placing it alongside books, movies, and music as intellectual property.
In ProCD, Inc. v. Zeidenberg, the Seventh Circuit held that shrinkwrap licenses could be enforceable, giving software companies confidence that license agreements accepted after purchase could have legal effect.
Not every court accepted every licensing argument. In SoftMan Products Co. v. Adobe Systems Inc., a federal district court looked beyond Adobe’s use of the word “license” and concluded that the economic reality of the transaction more closely resembled a sale.
Less than a decade later, however, Vernor v. Autodesk, Inc. strengthened the industry’s position by holding that when a company clearly retains title and significantly restricts transfer and use, the transaction can be treated as a license rather than a sale.
These cases didn’t invent software licensing.
They recognized and shaped a business model that had already evolved.
Video Games Inherited That History
Video games are software.
That means they inherited decades of legal and commercial practices from the broader software industry.
When you purchase a game through a modern digital storefront, you’re usually entering into a license agreement rather than acquiring ownership of a copy in the traditional sense.
That’s why you typically can’t resell your digital games.
It’s why access is tied to an account.
It’s why publishers can impose terms on how the software is used.
Whether consumers agree with that model is a separate question.
But understanding how we got here makes it clear that the gaming industry didn’t create this system on its own.
It inherited it from software.
Which of the historical reasons for software licensing still apply to games, and which no longer do?
For example:
- Does a single-player DRM-free game really need to be licensed?
- Should ownership be different for a live-service MMO than for an offline RPG?
- Can consumer ownership coexist with ongoing updates and support?
- Should digital purchases receive stronger statutory protections even if they’re still licensed?
Those are difficult questions.
There Is Already an Alternative
If the question is whether games can be distributed in a way that feels more like ownership, we don’t need a hypothetical answer.
It already exists.
GOG sells DRM-free games that can be downloaded, backed up, installed offline, and played without contacting GOG after installation.
Legally, those games are still distributed under license agreements.
Practically, however, the experience is much closer to ownership than most modern digital storefronts.
If you’ve downloaded your installer, you can archive it, reinstall it years later, and continue playing regardless of whether you’re connected to GOG.
GOG doesn’t erase the history of software licensing.
It demonstrates that companies can respect that history while still giving customers many of the practical benefits they associate with ownership.
Perhaps that’s the lesson gamers should take away.
The debate was never simply about ownership versus licensing.
It has always been about balancing the realities of software with the expectations of the people who buy it.