As I recall we've never "owned" games (same goes with movies and music). The creators own the game. We've only paid for the right to play the game. Sure, when physical we also owned the piece of plastic that the game was provided to us on.

Don't pay for the thing if it doesn't bring you joy.

Not sure I understood the experiment... I buy and play games, but I also work within games dev. I gave the post a like. 😅