alt Hacker News“Ah, but you didn’t buy a thing, you bought a license to temporarily use a thing in ways we deemed acceptable!” -publishers somewhere
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"deemed". the past tense is doing a lot of work here.
That’s the exact excuse used by the publisher in the article.
"Here's a device we sold you, but when you first turn it on you need to sign this 30 page contract which says you actually don't own the device, if you are mad at us you have to go to our preferred arbitration, and we reserve the right to turn your device off at any time on a whim because you left a bad review somewhere. Sign it or enjoy your worthless brick which we will not refund. Oh, and now every single manufacturer requires the same thing for this device class. So you can either have a washing machine or hand wash your cloths in your bathtub".
These sorts of EULA should be flat out illegal.
I don't see how the publisher is relevant here. It would be the developer saying that.