Blizzard announced that “Your use of the Platform is licensed, not sold, to you, and you hereby acknowledge that no title or ownership with respect to the Platform or the Games is being transferred or assigned and this Agreement should not be construed as a sale of any rights.” in their latest End User License Agreement.
This is illegal in Europe.
In the US however where customer protection laws are woefully lacking, this may just be pushed through. Purchasing a game equals ownership, it should never be any different or there are some VERY shady practises being enabled.
For instance, they can sell you a 90 dollar “AAAA” game and pull it after a few months, only to re-sell it to you in the same state. Why and how? Because you MUST pay what they ask you to in order to ACCESS it, it enables them to re-sell whatever they’ve already sold you because you do not OWN it.
This can count for digital purchases in game as much as they do on the launcher.
Pay to own and pay to access are drastically different, if Blizzard goes through with this, I will cancel my WoW sub out of solidarity after 17 years.