this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2026
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This is on the first page of the manual for Blizzard's 1994 video game "Warcraft: Orcs & Humans" Does this sound like you own the game? Games have always had licences, they're much more restrictive now, but they've always had licences.
A) That was physical media and so by default falls into the ownership system wherein possession is nine-tenths of the law. Neither Blizzard nor anyone else particularly cares about your Warcraft CD these days.
B) There is zero indication in that document that Blizzard has any plans or designs to walk into your house and rummage through your drawers to take away the game you bought from them. Additionally, all you did was reinforce what I said in my first post - barring reproducing the product for personal profit, do whatever the fuck you want with it is what they effectively said in legalese.
You owned the licence for that physical copy of the game.
They just didn't have a real way to revoke that license back then.
I completely agree it's not a restrictive licence and people basically did whatever. The next page of the manual talks about the installation CD being used as a form of DRM. The game requires the installation CD be in your computer to launch the game. No-CD patches were very common at the time because of that and there was nothing Blizzard could really do about them. Licences and DRM have always existed, they just weren't as restrictive in 1994.
The difference between "you used to own your games" and "games used to have less restrictive licences that were difficult to enforce" is trivial in everyday discussion. I only point it out because it explains the statements by Sony's lawyers. Legally speaking, nobody has ever owned their games. Even SuperTuxKart has a licence.