“What are we actually buying? We are buying a code that gives us access to a game, and we could potentially lose that access if our account is hacked,” João Vale, a 29-year-old teacher living in Valencia and a lifelong gamer, told The European Correspondent. “The company saves money by selling a code instead of producing a disc, but the consumer still pays the same price.”

Many of the cultural products we love have gone digital over the past three decades. We pay subscriptions to stream music and movies while second-hand stores fill up with unloved CDs, DVDs, and videotapes.

There are huge benefits in being able to take our music with us anywhere we go and being able to pick up new episodes of a must-see show when we’re away from home.

But we also lose something in going digital. A publisher can’t remove a DVD or a CD from your shelf. That, unfortunately, can and does happen with digital products downloaded to a device. Companies justify this as part of their efforts to curb illegal copying that robs artists and publishers of sales. It also gives them far more control over how digital products are used.

Video gaming is the at front line of this shift, sparked by French publisher Ubisoft’s move to cut off access to its racing game The Crew in 2024, ten years after its launch, citing “server infrastructure and licensing constraints”. Users who had bought the game, either via a code or a disc, could no longer play it.

They were furious. YouTuber Ross Scott started the Stop Killing Games campaign, which in turn triggered a European Citizens’ Initiative that asked the European Commission to consider a new law.

“Let people keep the copies they paid for,” Tiago, a 47-year-old gamer involved in the campaign, told TEC. “We have lost films and music from earlier periods of history, and we would love to have them now. The same thing is happening with video games.”

More than a million people have signed the petition. The Commission, however, said it cannot legally require companies “to keep video games playable after they stop being provided commercially.” It did promise to get industry and consumer representatives to discuss guidelines on video games’ “end of life.”

Catarina Vieira, a Dutch MEP for the Greens, said the Commission’s inaction was disappointing since “millions of people sign for something concrete,” many of whom hadn’t engaged in politics before.

French consumer advocates UFC-Que Choisir are suing Ubisoft in a French court, claiming that the company violated consumer rights. Judges will have to decide if buying a game gives users the right to play the game independently of the publisher’s wishes.

Technically, it's true, said Frithjof Michaelsen, who heads EU and digital policy for Que Choisir. Even 30 years ago, “people didn’t actually buy a copy of the game; they just acquired a licence.”

“In practice, it changes, of course, because as long as you have the physical medium, you can continue using it as much as you want, with exceptions,” he told TEC. “But the fact that it all goes digital, the big difference is that it gives the publishers the power to enforce this licence much more than they could in the past.”

Now, using most media requires you to log into a service first, even if it’s sitting on your device. That hands a lot of power to the publisher.

“They can freely decide at any point in time to completely withdraw the licence, to change it. They really have total control over the licence,” Michaelsen said, which consumers may not be aware of.

If Que Choisir wins their case, users will be able to play The Crew in single-person mode but not race against their friends as they could in the connected version.

Several websites offer old versions of games going back to the 1970s for anyone who wants a nostalgia kick. While the copyright on games won’t expire for decades, some publishers turn a blind eye or agree to allow them to be available online.

Paige Collings, senior speech and privacy activist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation digital rights group, said the issue goes far beyond media, as we use more connected devices and government services that are online only.

“People should deserve the right to be offline and to engage in a world that works for them,” she told TEC.

Grand Theft Auto going digital-only “is illustrative of the moment that we’re in, that things are online, and that there is a digitisation of so many kinds of tools and services, from gaming to accessing a doctor,” she said. “It's the absence of choice.”