In case somebody forgot: you never purchase a digital copy, you only purchase a license to exclusively watch a movie anytime you like using the vendors consumer platform. Anyone ever read the license agreements when "purchasing a movie" online?
This is the reason I do not buy movies any longer; 1 streaming account on Netflix is enough for me, I do not care about anything else anymore. May they rot in consumer hell.
Streaming services have no pretense of ownership. You can watch whatever they happen to have as long as you keep paying.
When you buy a title on Amazon, Apple, etc., the digital services are selling you on "ownership". In theory, this will be in your account forever (without any money changing hands after the initial transaction). The reality is obviously not so simple.
When Steam stops selling a game because of licensing issues and you bought it before, you still have it in your library and can download it from their servers. How and why is selling movies more complicated?
One reason I think steam has done as well as they have is that they have not fucked up(yet).
Every once in a while I think a little too much about how most of my games only run due to the benevolence of a company, and I start researching what it would take to run without steam. but in the end, steam is is such a quality of life improvement that I accept their solid track record of not fucking up and keep buying games there.
I think the proper paranoid way to buy games on steam would be to use a separate account for each one. then you could treat them as a sellable item.... which would be such a huge pain in the neck their would be no point of using steam in the first point(except, perhaps that it is the only place the game is sold.)
This is the reason I do not buy movies any longer; 1 streaming account on Netflix is enough for me, I do not care about anything else anymore. May they rot in consumer hell.