For Players

Players are being highly affected by the storefront oligopoly.

Game Ownership

Players do not truly own their games anymore. Digital centralized platforms have full control over gamers' purchases. They aren't offered the option to resell their games and recover some of their investment when they decide to stop playing. Some real world examples are:

• In the physical CD times, purchasing a game would allow players to resell it to anyone afterwards. Nowadays, games are locked to their account and personal email.

• 2 out of 5 PC* players have over 100 games in their library - thousands of dollars which gamers have no control over.

*Source: Our gaming community survey with 1000+ answers.

Risk of Loss (of money and assets)

Classic games are vanishing from storefronts as centralized platforms remove them with little notice. Players won't be able to purchase games that are deactivated. In some cases, gamers won't even be able to download the games they already own, making their libraries truly worthless:

• Nintendo's Wii U and 3DS e-shops closing in 2023. The Wii is even going to cease game downloads in the near future.

• Ubisoft is removing access to Assassin's Creed: Liberation HD on Steam, as have multiple companies with their old games.

• Google Stadia hasn't had a successful launch and the platform's future is uncertain.