Ok I haven’t spoken about this yet because I was curious to see if it would play out quickly but apparently it won’t.
Let’s talk Fortnite, the Nintendo Switch, and the PlayStation 4.
Let’s get one thing straight, it doesn’t matter if you love or hate the game. It doesn’t matter if you love or hate video games in general. This concerns you if you ever bought anything digitally online.
The fact of the matter is you do not “own” what you buy. You are only purchasing a “license” to use said digital item. I’ll get back to that in a second.
Right now, if you ever used your Fortnite account on a PlayStation 4, then you cannot use it on a XboxOne or Nintendo Switch. This sounds like it shouldn’t be an issue at all. For the majority of video game history, if you bought a game on one system, of course you can’t play it on another. What makes this different is that the company behind Fortnite, Epic, designed the game to be “cross-platform.” This means that once you create a universal account, you can take your progress to any platform without having to start from scratch. All your experience, statistics, and purchases will carry over. Currently the way it works in this game is that you can use your account with Xbox, PC, Mac, IPhone (iOS), Nintendo and in the future, Android platforms. You can move between these platforms freely and even play and add friends across different platforms. If you have a PlayStation, you can play with everyone BUT Xbox and Nintendo.
Now you might say at this point, “that’s Sony’s choice” or that it’s marketing strategy, but here’s where the real problem lies. What if you created your account on a PC, or Phone? Does Sony have the right to say, since you used your account on a PlayStation once, from hereon out you are restricted from using your account on a Xbox or Switch?
This is where “digital licensing” comes into play. There are no real laws that condemn Sony’s actions. Digital licensing rules are established through the End User Agreement that you agree to when using a service. If your ever read through these long agreements you’ll know that companies write these up to protect THEMSELVES, not you!
Let’s say you downloaded a song from the Google play store. Do you own the song? No. You own a license to listen to the song for as long as it’s available. If that artist decides to remove that song from the store you are not entitled to a refund just because you can’t listen to that song anymore. That’s part of the end user agreement. (FYI most companies do have ways for you to keep purchases in the event that this happens but they are not obligated to.)
What if you had a Netflix account and watched movies on your phone. How would you feel if you tried to use the same account on a TV and received an error message saying that because you used it on a phone you can no longer use your account on a TV? Sorry, I guess you just have to create a new account right?
This is the current situation. Third party accounts like the one used to play Fortnite should not have the ability to be “held hostage” by anyone other than Epic themselves.
As stupid as this situation is there is ONE way Sony could have gotten away with this. A WARNING!
“Caution, using your Epic account on this platform will forfeit your ability to use it on other platforms. Would you still like to continue?”
That’s it. Sony can now be total buttheads but hey, you knew from the start what you was signing up for.
What do you think about this?
