No. You do not own the contents of a vhs or cd or whatever your preferred media is with copyrighted material on it. You can only make copies for personal use because of a limited, singular license.
When people say “I own the game” these days they are generally saying there is no DRM or other factor preventing copying and distributing for whatever reason - whether it’s illegal or not is immaterial. They are also saying they can easily hand it off (I.e. letting people borrow or re-selling your own individual copy). Almost always this means an executable file not attached to a platform or any sort of online “check” or, of course, a hard copy. For some reason whenever steam comes up this stops being the case for folks.
When I “buy” a digital game on, say, xbox, i cannot easily transfer those contents. So most people distinguish it from hard copies which you can simply hand off to people or easily copy. If I talked about a game on my Xbox, the same way people talked about games on their steam account, they would say that I don’t have the game on Xbox yet they own it on Steam. This is why I talked about “colloquially” because people are actually not following technicalities, people pick and choose all the time how to apply the term “ownership.” It’s more about the ability to transfer the contents that it is about any legal aspect m.
This is why you hear people generally say “I buy hardcopies because I like to own my game.” Even though that is technically not the case.
It kinda sounds like you dont either, tho
No. You do not own the contents of a vhs or cd or whatever your preferred media is with copyrighted material on it. You can only make copies for personal use because of a limited, singular license.
When people say “I own the game” these days they are generally saying there is no DRM or other factor preventing copying and distributing for whatever reason - whether it’s illegal or not is immaterial. They are also saying they can easily hand it off (I.e. letting people borrow or re-selling your own individual copy). Almost always this means an executable file not attached to a platform or any sort of online “check” or, of course, a hard copy. For some reason whenever steam comes up this stops being the case for folks.
When I “buy” a digital game on, say, xbox, i cannot easily transfer those contents. So most people distinguish it from hard copies which you can simply hand off to people or easily copy. If I talked about a game on my Xbox, the same way people talked about games on their steam account, they would say that I don’t have the game on Xbox yet they own it on Steam. This is why I talked about “colloquially” because people are actually not following technicalities, people pick and choose all the time how to apply the term “ownership.” It’s more about the ability to transfer the contents that it is about any legal aspect m.
This is why you hear people generally say “I buy hardcopies because I like to own my game.” Even though that is technically not the case.