While not realistic to get the world to move to this there is a simple test - if you're still selling it and/or still protecting it with DRM then you have capability to distribute. If the answer to both is no then accessing the content where you originally bought it isn't a big issue anymore. What's a reasonable amount of access (e.g. "can I just redownload the game 24/7 for 8 years") would need to be defined but that's a much easier problem.

With the current model you run into an inherent conflict between protecting content you aren't truly relying on the monetization of anymore and what's fair to users because it requires putting the publisher/publisher's agent in front of the access.

Or you may not be licensed to deliver a copy of that game.

This has already happened with e-books, the rights are negotiated for a term and then when they're not renewed the copy is deleted off the consumer's device.

https://gizmodo.com/amazon-secretly-removes-1984-from-the-ki...

Another odd place this might crop up is music licensing... if the license for some music expires, often the show will be re-mastered with a different track instead. But that could be viewed as a different "edition" of the work, and if you aren't allowed to yoink the user's purchased copy (or simply stream the newer edition) then you have a problem.

Frankly these issues have already gotten out of hand and forcing producers/authors to reach less predatory agreements may be a good thing. I'm not thinking of the small author here, they're already losing, but the estate of a dead artist of some smash-hit catalog will often milk that extremely hard.

> Isn't a big blocker in this space the fact that when you can hide behind a digital license to use a copy of the game the potential that you may, at some point in the future, be unable to deliver a copy of that game to the consumer isn't a big issue?

It is for online only things, but if you buy a game and download it that shouldn't come with some assumption or requirement that I can forever re-download a copy. If I buy a download, it's fair to expect me to backup the thing I purchased. That works for music, movies, and ebooks - any DRM that requires a connection to some server, or an account should allow for transfers and companies who use that kind of DRM should be required to notify owners and patch the DRM out of products if the company no longer wants to maintain the servers and accounts provide that protection.

MMOs are still a problem since you aren't selling the game, just access to the systems that run it, but I think most people understand that.

The GDPR flagged this as a "TODO" item and left it explicitly there, so someone was at least already thinking about it.

I sometimes wonder if it is going to take a massive Estate Law court case to push the needle on this. We're about to the point where "Grandma's Steam Library" is going to be big enough in expected cash value that descendants would meaningfully fight over it, and open up the can of worms that is current digital goods laws. (Including the fact that technically Grandma's Steam Library has *no* survivorship guarantees and Steam's TOS, like most TOS agreements in current digital services, terminates along with the person it was contracted with.)