Unsurprising. You will own nothing, everything you do is surveilled on which means zero privacy, pay that monthly subscription fee (which can change at any time) for all your games and be very happy.
Hopefully you do not get banned or else all your digital games gone.
More folks need to realize that their best bet (if they want to play games) is to buy them through DRM-free services like GOG, and not Xbox Game Pass or whatever flavor of subscription there is.
You're right in that once you get banned (for any arbitrary reason), there is no recourse. You can't get your library back.
So what can folks do?
- Buy MP3s that are DRM free.
- Buy physical copies of movies on DVD/BluRay instead of paying for streaming.
- Buy games on GOG, or physical copies that do not depend on "launchers".
- Buy software that is not subscription-based (Affinity is fantastic if you want to replace Adobe, for example) and you can buy for a one-time fee.
> You will own nothing, everything you do is surveilled on which means zero privacy, pay that monthly subscription fee (which can change at any time)
With minecraft it's worse than that; a game I 'bought' years ago from another company, since acquired, can now be taken from me by Microsoft. If they were merely to deny me updates made after my purchase, that would be understandable, but they've gone further than that. To play the game as it existed when I purchased it, I need Microsoft's continued approval in the present and into the future.
Now I pirate a game I once bought, because I refuse to sign up to those new terms and due to that refusal, cannot play the game even the version of the game I originally bought. Lesson learned: buying games is for chumps. I am now reticent to buy any game from any company; any of them might get bought by microsoft too. When companies do shit like this they aren't just harming the users of that specific software, but the entire industry as a whole.
Even further: I bought minecraft in alpha, when the purchase agreement included receiving all future versions of minecraft. Going from "all future versions" to "well only this specific version and also we've migrated your account through multiple different systems so if you could just contact support that would be great" is rather frustrating.
Hopefully you do not get banned or else all your digital games gone.