Topic: NSO Games license/ownership, should it be considered as ownership?

should you consider NSO online games as have? can you really consider having the license to these games as ownership? I ask this as I'm debating how to mark them in my games collection on this site, but also as a serious question. can you really consider NSO as having any ownership of these games? currently i am marking them as owned past tense; as I technically never HAD them. so, do you consider NSO ownership in any way, or is it really just a license to you?

personally I don't consider it as having the games, since its essentially renting them, just for a long period of time

I don't use the site for keeping track of my collection, but you could just check the 'Have' box while you are subbed and uncheck it if you are not - you could mark it as 'owned' if you played it, but are no longer subbed. If you have access to it via NSO then you have it - whether you are technically renting it, own it or anything else in between isn't really relevant.

I mark 'have' since I have access to them.

Also, this thread was very prescient being posted a few hours before Nintendo announced they were removing a game from NSO.

If I can play 'em in the long term and say that I have them on my system, then QED: I have them.

I personally don't put NSO games in my collection page on this site. It does make some sense to do so if you want to, since you do 'have' the games temporarily as others have said, but I think it's pretty much objectively not ownership.

Some would say the same about digital games too😜

Just to clarify, I don't mark every NSO game as have, just games I played on NSO and want to give a review score to. Putting it in the collection means I can find all the review scores easily later.

And since modern physical games are allowed to have various digital rights management, the same can be said about physical games! You own the cartridge but maybe not technically the actual game inside.

@dmcc0 Yeah, but that's a bit more open for debate. If you've bought a game digitally you at least theoretically have access to it forever. People say the platform holder or publisher could release a mandatory update that makes the game unplayable - and yeah they could, but I'm not aware of that ever happening for an offline game. If your console breaks and the option to redownload your games on a new system has been shut down (or never existed to begin with, like with the Wii IIRC) then yes, your games are gone, but the same could be said for physical discs/cartridges breaking.

Whereas with Switch Online you obviously only have access to the games while you're subscribed, so it's very much a rental, albeit one that you can renew indefinitely - but if Nintendo removes a game, as we're now seeing them do for the first time (at least in Japan), there's nothing you can do about it.

@Dogorilla Yeah, I don't really disagree with any of that. For the record I'm not someone that considers digital games an rental, I'm pretty much digital-only on current consoles now. I keep hearing from the physical-only crowd that my digital games are suddenly going to disappear when greedy publishers decide to 'snap' them out of existence Thanos-style. I'm still waiting...

The Wii was pretty much the first digital store to close and I can still download all my purchases from there without issue (or at least I could last time I checked - I haven't heard otherwise so assuming all is good) so I think I'm fine on current gen for a good while yet. At this point I've have more failures of physical media than I've had instances of digital media being deleted from my library, so I'm not convinced by going physical is the only way to 'own' my games forever.

own means you keep forever, renting means you’re borrowing to play it temporary with a fee as collateral

@dmcc0 I do usually buy physical when I can but yeah, I'm not too concerned about my digital games vanishing, especially since Nintendo finally started tying them to the account rather than the individual console on Switch. I've heard of people losing access to digital films or music they've bought (it's kind of happened to me too in that I bought a Pokemon soundtrack on an old iTunes account that I can't get into any more after changing my email address) so I do slightly understand the concern, but with games you generally have them downloaded to the system rather than only being accessible through an online platform, so it's not quite the same thing.

@Dogorilla For digital music I tend to buy and download to at least one device anyway so I'm not worried about those, but digital movies are probably the the most 'at risk' given you usually can't permanently download those, and have to stream them. I'm buying more physical movies and TV stuff nowadays, but not because I think I'll lose access to digital purchases, but because the sound and picture quality are so much better on physical media than they are on digital purchases or streaming services. I've cancelled pretty much all of the streaming services in the last 6 months or so for both music and movies - I've had Netflix, Disney+, Now, & Amazon Prime for TV/Movies in the past and used Amazon Music, Spotify and Tidal at various times for music over the years.

To be fair, you technically don't 'own' physical games either (never have) , just the licence to play them. Only difference is, there's less chance of Nintendo or anyone else turning up at your door to demand the physical licence back.

With more and more games requiring downloads or, more commonly day one patches, physical games are no longer the guarantee that you'll be able to play those forever either though.

@dmcc0 I also prefer physical media for film and TV, but it's more just because that's what I naturally gravitate towards than for quality or ownership reasons (though those are bonuses!). I'm pretty bad at actually getting round to watching things, so I'd rather buy them and have as long as I want to watch them instead of having to keep paying a subscription to maintain access. When it comes to games, Switch Online is so cheap that I don't mind too much, and it's nice to be able to try out the games on there without paying for them individually, but it would be nice to be able to permanently buy the ones I really like as well.

It will be interesting to see how long Nintendo keeps patches available for 3DS and Wii U games. I think you can still download the Skyward Sword bug fix from the Wii Shop (even though it's a separate download rather than a typical patch like they're done nowadays), which is a good sign at least.

@Dogorilla Yeah, my movie and TV backlog isn't quite as big as my games backlog but it wouldn't take much for it to spiral out of control - storage space and cash are the main 2 limiting factors!

I still sub to Switch online as part of a family plan with my son and daughter, but I probably wouldn't bother if it was just me as I don't play online and haven't really played many of the included games. Having said that, I did just start Minish Cap on the GBA recently after deciding to try a Zelda game for the first time since Phantom Hourglass. I probably wouldn't have bothered if it wasn't on NSO

I don’t consider it to be ownership, since it’s a subscription method, meaning you have to periodically repay for NSO in order to have access to the games. Also, as last week proved, games can be delisted from the service at anytime. So this is definitely not ownership to me.

@StewdaMegaManNerd Agreed, 100% not ownership by virture of playing via subscription model/service. Similar to Netflix, you/we/I definitely don't 'own' any of that content...

This is the part subscriber forget you don't own the game you "Long Term" rental and you agreed to their EULA.

@dmcc0 thats what i decided on doing

cant believe i completely forgot to follow my own thread. at least the discussion's been good.

@dmcc0 while I VASTLY prefer physical. I have a lot of digital games. i see digital game ownership A lot like the owner ship of your yard in the U.S. you own it , its fully yours, but theres a slight chance it'll get imminent domained and taken from you (or in the case of digital games changed, restricted ,or delisted) its not a concern you have to worry about the vast majority of the time, but its something to think about.

but the main reason i prefer physical games is that they take up less storage space and theres absolutely no chance i'll ever have them taken. also just the feeling of owning something you can hold and put in your system's so much nicer than owning a digital copy. theres a lot more connection when you own something physically