If ANY city in the world had solved pollution by stopping vehicle circulation (often only for some types of cars) on some days, like they usually do, you'd have seen HUGE titles in the mainstream media reporting this incredible miracle!
Los Angeles? Even before the lockdown, reducing the number of cars on the roads significantly reduced the amount of air pollution in the city.
Also, cars themselves have produced less pollution due to the technology changes required by the Clean Air Act, so legally requiring cars to have those technological changes is neither arbitrary nor particularly unexpected.
www.epa.gov/transportation-air-pollution-and-climate-change/accomplishments-and-successes-reducing-air
It's not talked about in mainstream media, because mainstream media isn't good at reporting long-term changes in
anything. Plus reporting on good news contradicts the "it bleeds, it leads" mentality that has only been accelerated in the age of social media.
But maybe I'm misunderstanding the conversation.
Regardless, this seems very off-topic. The government changing air pollution guidelines
is nothing like a video game company disabling a game you bought.
If you bought a car, but can't drive it in a particular country,
you still own it. You have the right to sell it, as is, to someone else (probably outside the country so they can drive it). Or you have the right to
modify the car such that it can be brought up to environmental standards, and you can drive it again in your country.
None of that happens with video games. (At least it's not normal, nowadays.) You
do not have ownership of a video game. If you did, then you would have the right to
modify your copy of the code so that it could be brought up to the standards of modern hardware, or to make it playable entirely offline (if the game, or Steam, or Epic services, or the Discord API, change such that they're not available).
A better analogy would be the "right to repair" issues that happen with physical things like John Deere tractors. For those who don't know, John Deere is a multibillion dollar company that manufactures farm equipment, which is used by pretty much any farmer in the U.S. (and many farmers outside the U.S.). Farm equipment is complex, and modern farm equipment requires digital software to run.
But if you buy a John Deere tractor, and the software stops working for any reason, you're locked out of even basic functions of the tractor (such that it can't even turn on). Because it's a software issue,
you can't get it repaired anywhere other than a John Deere dealer. And if John Deere (or its dealers) decide it's not worth it to fix, then the tractor that you paid six figures for is now worth nothing.
Basically, they can end your multi-generational occupation as a family farmer on a whim.
That's the kind of thing we're talking about with video games. (Fortunately not the six figure part.)
