Digital copies are subject to many hundreds of revisions/changes that you may never notice (most are typo fixing). Even print editions have these types of changes, and some are even substantial (famously, the Lord of the Rings has various changes made between editions by Tolkien himself, mostly fixing typos and minor inconsistencies; but he also accidentally got a revision of the Hobbit that was a major plot change still referenced in LotR itself: https://sweatingtomordor.wordpress.com/2018/05/17/were-tolki...
Some publishers maintain a list of "corrections" - some only update a digital copy on a new edition of a print copy, and some update them as they go. I've done a print-on-demand book at it technically has something like 50 revisions but only one is marked in the book itself as 'significant' - because why not update the source PDF when you can just click a button?
A similar thing is happening with software; DooM has had people carefully inspect the various different versions and patches released; but now massive games are mostly online and version differences are lost to time; even if you know the changelog you can't ever actually experience the old version anymore.
This is different, though. They don’t break into your house, find the book on your shelf, and update it with a sharpie.
The digital corrections and changes are _fine_ if they are opt in. It’s when they are automatically applied, and there is no (legal, tos abiding) way to keep the original file and reject updates that’s… horrifying.
Some publishers maintain a list of "corrections" - some only update a digital copy on a new edition of a print copy, and some update them as they go. I've done a print-on-demand book at it technically has something like 50 revisions but only one is marked in the book itself as 'significant' - because why not update the source PDF when you can just click a button?
A similar thing is happening with software; DooM has had people carefully inspect the various different versions and patches released; but now massive games are mostly online and version differences are lost to time; even if you know the changelog you can't ever actually experience the old version anymore.