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[DLC for your Car] Is this what horse armor has led us to?
Dibbit
Registered User, Transition Team regular
Registered User, Transition Team regular
If I may, for but a moment, take a measure of your time and, Continuing from the Social Media Thread, present to you for your perusal:
A thread wherein we discuss being locked out of already present features in things you own.
Whereby many erudite personae have laid out the discussion as such:
Tesla, BMW, Mercedes and others are locking you out of features already present in your car unless you pay them money:
This is tolerable, because:
- You got what you were buying, no false promises were made, the fact that there is extra beyond the original contract at an extra cost doesn't matter.
- Customizing cars is expensive, building 1 system, and turning the needed systems on/off as needed is actually cost saving.
This is an outrage, because:
- It's MY CAR, I should be able to access all it's features
- What's next? Unlock premium driving for $50 a month? We need to stop this!
- My Ukrainian friends are prevented from circumventing the limiter because of copyright law and because Putin is being a big dick.
Now, I personally HATE the thought of having a monthly subscription to use the AC in my car, like.. Hate it in my bones.
But I don't mind the same thing in a videogame? I'm not fuming over not having access to the premium skin, even though it's right there on my computer.
I'm more conflicted about pre-installed DLC, but Rimworld, where they gave a patch and everyone got 50% of the features for free, and 50% behind buying the DLC, that felt alright?
On the other hand, if VmWare starts their "You can only use emulate 4 cpu with your consumer version of our software, you need to pay us $500 a year to increase that integer" they can fuck right of.
A thread wherein we discuss being locked out of already present features in things you own.
Whereby many erudite personae have laid out the discussion as such:
Tesla, BMW, Mercedes and others are locking you out of features already present in your car unless you pay them money:
This is tolerable, because:
- You got what you were buying, no false promises were made, the fact that there is extra beyond the original contract at an extra cost doesn't matter.
- Customizing cars is expensive, building 1 system, and turning the needed systems on/off as needed is actually cost saving.
This is an outrage, because:
- It's MY CAR, I should be able to access all it's features
- What's next? Unlock premium driving for $50 a month? We need to stop this!
- My Ukrainian friends are prevented from circumventing the limiter because of copyright law and because Putin is being a big dick.
Now, I personally HATE the thought of having a monthly subscription to use the AC in my car, like.. Hate it in my bones.
But I don't mind the same thing in a videogame? I'm not fuming over not having access to the premium skin, even though it's right there on my computer.
I'm more conflicted about pre-installed DLC, but Rimworld, where they gave a patch and everyone got 50% of the features for free, and 50% behind buying the DLC, that felt alright?
On the other hand, if VmWare starts their "You can only use emulate 4 cpu with your consumer version of our software, you need to pay us $500 a year to increase that integer" they can fuck right of.
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That's the thing, it feels so wrong to have to rent the thing that's already in your possession.
But on the other hand, I "rent" my house from the bank, and you can lease the whole car, so why not just a piece?
And as I said, for some game system, I don't mind that parts of it are already on my computer, a skin someone else bought in a multiplayer game is stored on my pc, and it's only a piece of code that's preventing me from accessing it. But I would hate Microsoft if there were like "Pay us $5 a month to use calculator"
But then again, do I? I have game pass ultimate, and it gives me access to Premium Solitaire, something that's already on my computer...
I just don't like being penny-and-dimed just for existing. And I think the "recuring payment" scheme is already going far enough. So many things are already going online just so they can be SaaS and get your sweet-sweet money.
The Sweet Summer package, new from Audi. For 3 months, you can cool those sweet summer days with 60% strength AC and fold down sun-visors, cooling you to a refreshing 83 degrees on the days that you need. Includes 5 Any-Temp(tm) days with unrestricted temperature, and a 2 weekend date-night special, enabling the interior lights for those special moments.
* Cannot be combined with "Audi for Ladies" As the Passenger-side vanity mirror option conflicts with the sun-visor option
... I hate thinking this.
the mercedes horsepower thing is especially tickling because its basically just paying for the right to wear your engine out even faster, thereby paying more in maintenance and shortening the effective lifespan of your car. you have to pay for this privilege. its genius.
you're seeing in the luxury market but the kind of people who buy luxury cars are typically uhh.... not wise people.... and would happily be gouged for the honor of driving around with a mercedes badge on their hood
the real test will be if and when it ever makes it to the broader market and that's when consumers will vote
i have a feeling that few to no makers will be brave enough to pull this shit on something like a corolla.. it takes years of planning to execute something like that and the price of failure in the non-luxury market is... brutal
we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other
What’s the use case to own a piece of hardware that is gated behind a micro transaction
Software I get, assuming there’s a downloaded additional asset or some sort of service that isn’t already in your possession
Hardware micro transactions are just insulting, unless there’s some use case I’m missing
if I had the slightest bit of faith that it's not going to lead to "I have altered the deal," or, perhaps even more infuriating, scenarios where a bunch of stuff breaks because you haven't connected to the internet in X hours
and
if I didn't suspect it's just another step in the process of enshittification
https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/
Like, they've already spent the time and money to put those heating elements into your seats. Even if you never decide to pay for access, they'll still want extra money for giving you the option.
Like if you figured out how to get the heater in your seats to work without paying BMW, and they found out - could they come after you?
Sounds absurd.
They could put into the contract penalties (including confiscation of the car) for jailbreaking it. So they could potentially sue you(or repossess the car) if that is part of the contract.
I suspect they will not do that because car companies seem far more media savvy that WOTC. And “BMW repossesses car from man who tried to repair it” isn’t the headline they want to see about their product. But you never know.
Someone was saying there is precedent - John Deere suing farmers who jailbroke their tractors
So this has come up, and I think it was in John Deere tractors (I'd have to check) And basically:
While it's not illegal to modify your own property, it is illegal to bypass the DRM encryption schema on the software and to run a jail-broken version of their copyrighted software.
So, every company that does this hides behind the "you're a filthy hacker for hacking into our proprietary stuff, go to jail big time!" schtick.
For instance, unlocking the extra "bonus" batteries in a Tesla, you would have to update and flash the battery management system, and that not only voids your warranty --Natch--- It is also considered hacking and bypassing DRM, a jailable offense.
Right, but now specific Right to Repair legislation has been passed to deal with that, I think.
At the same time, California is banning ECU mods.
Voiding your warranty is probably a sufficient deterrent for a car.
But just the concept of DLC passes for my car is ridiculous and I hate it
It's state-by-state, by which I mean Colorado made legislation for that: (that just covers agricultural equipment, instead of something more general)
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/04/colorado-governor-signs-tractor-right-to-repair-law-opposed-by-john-deere/
Yeah, you're right, A quick search for the John Deere gives this article where John deere submitted a letter to the copyright office making the case that they should be exempt from a proposed law for circumventing copyright in certain cases
Basically "We need copyright so we can punish those darn farmers for haxoring our tractor and make them go real good"
And here is BMW "renting" heated seats in South Korea
@edit: Ooh, and for those people thinking "They wouldn't put safety features behind a paywall, would they?" I present to you:
BMW UK, putting safety features behind a monthly payment, But with a TRIAL....
High beam assistant sounds like something a bmw owner would need. Maybe they should have turn signal fucking assist.
pleasepaypreacher.net
I live an a pretty urbanish area. I, basically, never need my high beams.
you must have actual street lights in my sub urban town I still need mine all the time
pleasepaypreacher.net
A lot of them feel like I'm being back-seat driven by my own vehicle.
The use case, such as it is, is just rent-seeking.
The whole point of that kind of thing in cars is "because we can, and our financial guys used the word innovate a lot when pitching this to the higher-ups."
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(It's me. No one's outliving a Toyota.)
I would absolutely avoid a car purchase that requires subscriptions for what should be basic trim features. But I also think there isn't a predatory monetization scheme in the world that Americans haven't swallowed hook, line, and sinker, so absent aggressive regulation, I expect this will soon be everywhere. What's another $40 rolled into your 96 month loan that's already underwater?
There’s a couple things driving this. Tesla has been the poster child for subscription everything, and their absurd stock valuation has the entire industry trying to copy the same strategies. Then there’s the move to EVs, which don’t need any of service ICE cars do. No spark plugs, oil changes, or any of a hundred other parts manufacturers can sell and make money from, so they’re looking for new revenue streams. It also allows them to make subscription money from the used market, where currently they don’t really make anything outside of service.
You can't give someone a pirate ship in one game, and then take it back in the next game. It's rude.
Or "sorry we don't support your car anymore so we bricked it"
The first sentence is theoretically reasonable if distasteful because fuck you, you put it in the vehicle you sold because it saves you money to unify your manufacturing lines. You don't get to charge consumers extra for saving yourself money.
The bolded part is because that is absolutely where this will end up and as quickly as even a single car company gets enough people on board.
This needs to be rejected not just on the level of the new proposals but frankly any and everything that resembles fees after sale. OnStar, internet, apps, everything. They tested the waters with those things and now it's being pushed further.
I think a very clear line in the sand has to be drawn that if a manufacturer wants to offer a feature or service for a vehicle? It comes in the sale price or it doesn't come at all because otherwise this ends up in a boiled frog scenario.
OnStar made sense when it was the ability to call a live person and get some help. I have no idea what the service is these days, but paying a monthly fee to have someone waiting on the other end of a phone line for you? That's a monthly expense that the company is charging you a monthly fee for. I've got no issues with something like that, the alternative is trying to NPV out the numbers for a 'lifetime' subscription type thing and that's going to be silly big.
But subscriptions in the vein of a software license type thing is definitely where this is going. And it'll be subscriptions for something that the company will be producing anyway, the 2024 BMW will be getting the 2024 maps, while the 2023 one won't unless they pony up. Plus there's the added factor that they'll be looking to drive demand for these things, which means looking to prevent you from using your whatevers that would let you do whatever they're charging for for free.
Ars Technica article.
I don’t think I’ll ever buy a new, top of the line vehicle at this rate. I’m honestly about two steps from a face recognition disrupting face tattoo and carrying a knock-off katana under a black 90’s trench coat.
I remember it making the news a while back that a guy took his second hand Tesla to an authorised dealer for maintenance, they discovered that the larger battery installed in it by the previous owner hadn’t had the paperwork processed correctly, so they disabled the extra capacity in software, telling the guy he’d have to give them $4500 to turn back on the capacity of the battery that was still physically installed in his car.
There was another story of a company who made ski equipment (I think) who offered a jacket with an airbag feature that was paid for monthly and would be disabled if you didn’t pay, in that case I believe it was the internet misinterpreting a monthly payment scheme and blowing it out of proportion, but there is precedent for companies to disable safety equipment you physically own.
Why do we have to have all the lame parts of a cyberpunk dystopia and I still can’t get a cybernetic arm that turns into a chain gun?