The Videogame Industry Is Fighting 'Right To Repair' Laws (vice.com)

An anonymous reader quotes Motherboard: The video game industry is lobbying against legislation that would make it easier for gamers to repair their consoles and for consumers to repair all electronics more generally. The Entertainment Software Association, a trade organization that includes Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, as well as dozens of video game developers and publishers, is opposing a "right to repair" bill in Nebraska, which would give hardware manufacturers fewer rights to control the end-of-life of electronics that they have sold to their customers...

Bills making their way through the Nebraska, New York, Minnesota, Wyoming, Tennessee, Kansas, Massachusetts, and Illinois statehouses will require manufacturers to sell replacement parts and repair tools to independent repair companies and consumers at the same price they are sold to authorized repair centers. The bill also requires that manufacturers make diagnostic manuals public and requires them to offer software tools or firmware to revert an electronic device to its original functioning state in the case that software locks that prevent independent repair are built into a device. The bills are a huge threat to the repair monopolies these companies have enjoyed, and so just about every major manufacturer has brought lobbyists to Nebraska, where the legislation is currently furthest along... This setup has allowed companies like Apple to monopolize iPhone repair, John Deere to monopolize tractor repair, and Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo to monopolize console repair...
Motherboard's reporter was unable to get a comment from Microsoft, Apple, and Sony, and adds that "In two years of covering this issue, no manufacturer has ever spoken to me about it either on or off the record."

Comments

definitions?

[supernova87a]

ok, so you're going to require manufacturers to make repair manuals and parts available to the general public. What's to stop them from writing in the manual, "purchase and install Comprehensive Assembly #012934" and selling that part which is basically a replacement for the entire unit? Who's to contradict them if they say that the unit is not serviceable?

Re:definitions?

[Goldsmith]

It's interesting to read the background on this. It's really about warranties.

Federal law is that a company can't insist that you use a particular vendor for repair or servicing to maintain a warranty. Now, that's unusual to think about because that's not what we're used to seeing in reality.

The reality is that if opening or servicing the electronics is so convoluted and difficult that damage is nearly certain when anyone without training opens it, then the warranty is voided by that damage. The training materials and tooling that are used by companies to train their own people in how to properly repair the electronics without damage would be made available to consumers in "right to repair" legislation.

If a company decides to make something that cannot be repaired... well, ok. It may be that laws like this simply push manufacturers to shut down their internal repair groups and stop supporting any warranty or repair at all.

Re:definitions?

[Darinbob]

No, they still want to sell their devices. So what if some people repair their own? Are they going to shut down the entire product line for a few malcontents? Have an unrepairable by any means product will drive most people away.

Re:definitions?

[The Grim Reefer]

Maybe, maybe not. When is the last time you took repairability into account before making a purchase?

I do as much as possible. But I'm old and still remember when things were built with that in mind. Granted, things like televisions are generally not considered repairable. Usually by the time they malfunction and are out of warranty, it's cheaper to purchase a new one that is usually better anyhow.

I still build all of my desktop computers because I can repair and upgrade them continually. I always consider the ease of working on a car before I purchase one too. Of course I don't do as much of my own mechanical work as I used to, but there is something satisfying about fixing your own car. When I was in my twenties I still had more time than money, and on a continual quest to go faster. So I rebuilt my own engines back then. I don't have all of the tools needed to attempt that on a modern engine. But rebuilding a fuel injection system is a hell of a lot simpler than a Quadrajet carburetor.

I can still remember

[Anonymous Coward]

When you brought a Sony radio there would be a schematic sheet inside the case so you could repair the electrical device yourself.

During the 70's or 80's...

[magusxxx]

This reminds me of a true story that keeps rearing it's head up ever few years. A certain computer company charged their clients thousands of dollars to upgrade each of their mainframes. Sure enough the upgrade worked great. Without flaw. The Problem: All the technician did was flip a switch inside the machine. While this discussion is about repair service, it falls under the same logic. A lot of the little tweaks to fix something could be done with little or no cost.

Re:MS used to ban people for useing there own hdd'

[wierd_w]

Want to know the actual difference between a "legitimate" HDD, and a not-legitimate one?

A small PNG image file loaded onto some magic sectors, and an 8 byte magic number written directly afterward. The drive's firmware was default factory, but only a small handful of drives were supported.

That image was of the microsoft logo.

Yes. The presence or absence of that little png file is SO TOTALLY going to change how a game is played online. /s

No-- Microsoft KNEW that they were vastly overcharging for a COTS component that was not special in any way except for the data stored on the platter, which is very inexpensive to replicate. They did not care. They were the gatekeepers, and were milking people dry by purposefully selling base systems without HDDs, or with very tiny ones, while pushing digital downloads.

Know what else? When it came to the "USB" storage options, I put various very high speed USB2.0 devices that I had PERSONALLY TESTED the raw performance of and verified that they were bitching fast, on my 360 to see if MS was full of shit when the console did its own testing-- Sure enough, it was premium bullshit. It would consistently say the device did not meet recommended speed requirements. Know what I did? I went out and bought one of the shitty USB memory sticks MS was hawking, and tested it myself. It underperformed compared to the units I had been attaching. The magic? The USB string-- For real.

Bullshit. Premium bullshit all around, and people just ignore it, because there is no alternative. Fuck that noise.

Re:MS used to ban people for useing there own hdd'

[SuricouRaven]

The Gameboy uses a similar trick - I mean the original one, the first. The firmware in the device (such as it is, it's really tiny) checks for the presence of a certain byte sequence, an encoded image. If the bytes match expectations, it gets displayed. If they aren't there, the firmware locks the device. That's why if you power it on without a cartridge in you see a scrolling blank box: The image is the Nintendo logo.

The intention was to use trademark law to prevent unlicensed publishers selling games: In order to make a game cartridge run on the Gameboy, it had to include the Nintendo logo, and thus any unlicensed publishers would get sued by Nintendo for trademark infringement. I understand that a later supreme court ruling determined that a trademark could not be considered a trademark if it was incorporated into a functional element, but that was post-Gameboy.

I'm guessing Microsoft pull the same trick. Perhaps it still works in some countries.