Has anyone ever wondered why we buy cars the way we do? If you wanted to buy a banana, you wouldn't go to a banana store. You would go to a grocery store and pick from a multitude of different fruits. Yet with (new) cars, there is no grocery store equivalent. Why is that? Well the reason is that in all 50 states dealerships have established a legal monopoly which basically prohibits this.

Planet Money did a podcast on this very issue.

Intel is a public company. They have a fiduciary duty to be profitable not charitable.

Was it not possible to teach critical thinking before this bill was passed?

I'm not defending the ending. I only brought it up as an example of what can happen when fans are led to believe that they have an influence on what happens in a story. Leigh Alexander wrote this over at Gamasutra and I believe it:

"One of my friends thought the name of the fan petition, "Retake Mass Effect," (a subversion of the game's own "Retake the Earth" marketing tagline) was particularly interesting -- "as if it ever belonged to them," he reflected. But if games really are the owned vision of a team of creators, then BioWare's first mistake was committing so fully to the fiction that it did.

If you promise your players agency and involvement, they are going to take it seriously. If you use every trick in your repertoire to immerse and engage, to create a sense of ownership, it seems you will need to consider the implications of those promises beyond how much downloadable content you can sell. "

Source

I think EA and Bioware are finding out what can happen when you start letting fans believe they have an influence on what happens in a story.

"However, unlike with Office, Windows licensing has been heavily scrutinized ever since the Consent Decree Microsoft signed with the Department of Justice, so it just isn’t possible for Microsoft to cut special deals without getting into legal hot water."

According to this article over at ExtremeTech, Microsoft isn't allowed to have separate licensing deals for Windows.

http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/121769-is-onlive-pirating-windows-and-what-will-it-cost-them

Is there a reason why nobody has patented the ability to play a game in the first person perspective? I don't know anything about patent law, but this doesn't seem any less ridiculous than other patents that have been approved and defended.

The bill isn't law quite yet. Stupid bills wanting to become stupid laws get introduced all the time and most of them don't go anywhere.

And those kids are only spending that lunch money on soda and french fries, so taking that money away from them would actually be a public service. Think of the children.

It might not, and based on the replies, it probably doesn't have anything to do with it. But, it's something I was curious about so I threw the question out there.

Yeah, I wasn't trying to imply that it was the only reason for the problems. I actually wasn't trying to imply anything. I was just wondering if it could have any part in the problem at all.

No, I wasn't suggesting anything. I know Sony is a large company with a lot of money and resources, but I'm pretty ignorant as to how they allocate all of those resources. It was something I was curious about, so I asked.

Is any of this the result of Sony's PSN being a free service? Could something like this happen just as easily on Xbox Live, or would it be more difficult since they charge for the service and are therefore able to put more money into it?

I think it's because most people understand, even if it's only on a subconscious level, that if people only follow the rules of society when they are being watched or forced to then that society won't last for very long.