http://www.xboxdailynews.com/2011/08/29/seeing-red-rage-dev-id-software-locks-down-single-player-content-for-used-buyers/



Hmmm, not sure about this. Yes, it's a good thing that they want the money they deserve for making the game.... but content? That's a slippery slope....

Oh look, another reason not to buy something from Bethesda.

lol, I have no problem with policies like this. The companies don't profit from used sales, so they have no reason to serve people who buy the game used equally compared to those who buy new.

I support this.

Maybe once Used Game sellers like gamestop start giving a cut to the developer, they will change their tune on these codes for content/multiplayer.

Life used to be so easy.

Go into Game, buy a game.
Go home load and play.
No internet thingy requiring hoops to be leapt through.

Ah happy days

Chibi Bodge-Battle wrote:Life used to be so easy.

Go into Game, buy a game.
Go home load and play.
No internet thingy requiring hoops to be leapt through.

Ah happy days

Agreed...

No! I like my always on DRM!

On RAGE:

Chibi Bodge-Battle wrote:Life used to be so easy.

Go into Game, buy a game.
Go home load and play.
No internet thingy requiring hoops to be leapt through.

Ah happy days

this was before gamestop and user used game retailers extracted about 3-4 billion dollars from devs/producers pockets.

How are they doing that?
Is buying a second hand car any different?
Just curious as I am well behind on these issues.

Melissia wrote:lol, I have no problem with policies like this. The companies don't profit from used sales, so they have no reason to serve people who buy the game used equally compared to those who buy new.

This. The only reason why people don't like this, or project 10 dollar, is because they're cheap.

However, it's places like Gamestop (especially when I've heard they'll buy games for a few bucks and then try to sell them at $20) who are making all that money, not the people who made the game.

That's why I always buy new.

Digital content is one area where used sales really, really hurt producers.

If I buy a used car, I get less car than if I bought it new. If I buy a used 40k army, I have to put time and effort into fixing/setting it up.

If I buy a used video game... I've got the exact video game. There's no natural depreciation that encourages new sales. Computer game makers realized long ago that they need to put enough content into a game to make people actually buy it. There's little market for "used" computer games.

It seems to me that offering more content for the people that actually pay full price is a good way to encourage people to, well, pay full price.

As they say, "you get what you pay for."

Chibi Bodge-Battle wrote:How are they doing that?
Is buying a second hand car any different?
Just curious as I am well behind on these issues.

If a dealership wants, it can say its warranty is non-transferable. If they provide extra features for the car such as on-star, as another example, if the contract says it's non-transferable it's generally non-transferable, as that's what you signed up for when you bought the feature on the car.

That's basically what the game devs are starting to do more and more; "the game is transferable, but this bonus feature is not".



I think I'll quote Penny Arcade here...

The idea that THQ [or Bethesda, in this case] is somehow “disrespecting customers” with this kind of rhetoric misunderstands the situation as completely as it is possible to do so. In a literal way, when you purchase a game used, you are not a customer of theirs. If I am purchasing games in order to reward their creators, and to ensure that more of these ingenious contraptions are produced, I honestly can’t figure out how buying a used game was any better than piracy. From the perspective of a developer, they are almost certainly synonymous.

I was opposed when i read it originally but after reading the arguments for it, it have to say i'm kinda siding with the Devs and such on this.

Chibi Bodge-Battle wrote:How are they doing that?
Is buying a second hand car any different?
Just curious as I am well behind on these issues.

Few differences. The people who makes the cars also own the dealership that sells them or is in contract with them. Games don't have that.

Cars also last a lot longer then a new game. A car will last you years where a game dosen't.

Cars also degrade over time, so a used car dosen't perform as well as a new car. A used game performs as well as a new game.

Finally cars need service. The dealership can still make money selling parts and other things.

Chibi Bodge-Battle wrote:How are they doing that?
Is buying a second hand car any different?
Just curious as I am well behind on these issues.

because games, unlike cars, are information not physical products that wear out.
you are purchasing an experience, its like watching a movie then walking out and selling your ticket to the next guy who goes in and sells it to the next guy, the theatre only makes the initial sale and loses a number of theoretical customers.
Add in that some people buy the game used or rent them, make a copy then return it and/or download them illegally, and you have issues.
It is /mostly/ publishers forcing DRM into games to make more money, the bigger the game is expected to be the more dev time can be justified working DRM into the system, so you see high brow games like rage and starcraft with DRM programmed into the game itself, while smaller ones or ones less likely to be pirated rely on out-of-the-box stuff like securom

Just wait, its going to keep getting worse (diablo3 requires an internet connection 100% of the time to play) until we are all using cloud computing of some sort or another. Even HUGE flops like the assassins creed thing where people who bought the game weren't able to play it for weeks aren't remembered by customers for more than 10 minutes in any meaningful way.

It /is/ kind of unfair, i'm a try-before-i-buy guy myself with some exceptions, ID and DoubleFine being two of them. And kind of a double edged sword, corps assume that games are pirated because we dont want to pay for them, when in reality its because many gamers simply cant afford all the games they want, increasing sales on something like RAGE isnt perceived as also hurting sales on other titles that are more easily pirated, which I think is why there are fewer and fewer studios and games that take risks, its just easier to pirate those games when you /have/ to buy the more mainstream ones.

Additionally, having a high resale value increases the overall value of a new car.

Meh, online activation DA: O free DLC style.

I'll still buy it, but $15 CAN or less because I consider it a rental. Two things that wave this would be co-op and being so good I'd be willing to buy it twice. I still have Icewind Dale to finish (thank you gog.com).

I know many here will not go a day without internet for most their lives, but I have and will live & work in places with little to no internet access for months to years at a time so having to go online is a big no no in most cases.

What all this DRM stuff does is drive up the console sales at the expense of PC sales, more so I imagine for kids looking to trade in games to get their next game.

Not really? There is almost no used game market for the PC. These days, developers are more worried about the lost profits from the used game market than from pirates... as that's quite a bit larger.

No, this kind of program is pretty much designed specifically for consoles in the first place. Actually given the switch to Steam and other similar services, which almost all have offline modes, PC gaming can work quite well without a net connection. With Steam, at least, you need an initial connection, then you're done and verified, you go offline and you never have to connect for that game ever again.

Chibi Bodge-Battle wrote:Life used to be so easy.

Go into Game, buy a game.
Go home load and play.
No internet thingy requiring hoops to be leapt through.

Ah happy days

I'd take the ritualistic ceremony that was required to get my NES games to work over the current mess any day.

Melissia wrote:Not really? There is almost no used game market for the PC. These days, developers are more worried about the lost profits from the used game market than from pirates... as that's quite a bit larger.

I think its more that the used game markets people are willing to pay money for the product, where pirates are generally seen as not.

since they are willing to pay money, they want to kick the user down a flight of stairs and take it.
Its kind of like the explosion of crap MMO's when warcraft was successful, there's money to be made, GIVE IT TO US SCREW THE PLAYERS
The new black is DLC that was created before the game was released so you can charge 70, 80, 100 for a "complete" game


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Monster Rain wrote: NES

you know, my sister got one of the top-loading newer NES's and she said it resolved alot of her issues with dust.

(I also blew out the games with 80psi air, lol)

There's no effective difference, to the developer, between a used game non-customer and a pirated copy non-customer. The developer/publisher didn't get money from either one. When you buy used from Gamestop, you're Gamestop's customer, not the developer's. When you pirate, you're not the developer's customer either.

There's a slight difference, actually.

For short games with a high resale value, developers can charge a little more, and buyers know they'll get it back when they resell.

Pirates literally only buy one copy.

Melissia wrote:There's no effective difference, to the developer, between a used game non-customer and a pirated copy non-customer. The developer/publisher didn't get money from either one.

There is, the difference being that one was willing to get the game, maybe, but got it used for whatever reason, price, sales pitch, some gamestop offer, whatever.

By limiting content for 2nd hand gamers you present the user with an opportunity cost, is the ~$10 I save worth the content I'm going to miss out on?

But you're right, they are functionally the same if you look at it from a non-marketing perspective.

This is slightly different from just providing DLC to purchasing users on launch, they are just adding it on the front end instead of the back end, which is negative. instead of getting something new and exciting for buying it from XYZ , we are instead takings something away.

Buy new if you want your favorite devs to keep making games, otherwise they have no money to make games.

And the second hand market is killing console gaming, har de har har.

Thank you for the answers

TBH am not a very active (PC) gamer and have no console systems, but can appreciate the concerns that may affect the viability of the industry.
I have bought second hand games from Game for my daughter's DS, but afaik most, if not all of their re-sell stock is obtained via trade ins, so new games get sold in return.

ZatGuy wrote:And the second hand market is killing console gaming, har de har har.

Har har har will be right once all those console sales aren't propping up the developers to continue developing games on either platform; pc or console.

Without consoles, there would be no triple-A titles that we have come to expect.

Chibi Bodge-Battle wrote:Thank you for the answers

TBH am not a very active (PC) gamer and have no console systems, but can appreciate the concerns that may affect the viability of the industry.
I have bought second hand games from Game for my daughter's DS, but afaik most, if not all of their re-sell stock is obtained via trade ins, so new games get sold in return.

See, that's actually the thing that causes the problems in the developers' eyes.

You get a lot of these single player games(The Force Unleashed, for example) where people buy them brand new at launch--and then trade them in as soon as they do one playthrough. Gamestop will pay something like $35-$40 on the title depending on how 'in demand' it is. They then resell it for $52 or $57 as "PREOWNED", and they pocket the difference entirely on their own since the developers and publishers are only paid for the original sale.

I don't think I've ever sold a game, however, I don't like the secondhand market becoming crippled in such a way. Next time you walk into a vintage game shop, Slackers or whatever equivalent you might have around and you see that Nintendo 64 hanging on the wall, and you think to yourself "$42 and I could have two controllers, Goldeneye, two 40s of malt liquor, and fun for myself and a friend for the weekend? feth yes!", imagine now if they had some way of making it so that you couldn't play multiplayer if you hadn't originally bought the game yourself? How about if Smash Bros. only limited you to half the characters unless you bought it new? "No problem," you say, "I'll just buy the new copy, or I'll just send $5 to Nintendo to have them unbreak my game for me." Oh, wait, it's 10+ years old. You can't find it new, and even if you could, how do you know that the activation server is available still to bless your copy? It's effectively bit-rot. You see this a lot in computer gaming but with hardware no longer existing to run old software.

Granted, the game companies have already made their money and made off like bandits. They might, eventually, 10 years later, re-re-release Goldeneye on the "Super Wii 64", but you don't know that they ever will. Even then, it won't be the original experience, it will be on their new custom controllers that don't have the same feel, and probably with an engine overhaul so that it has more of a 'polished' look.

This is why this is bad. This is why people need to not buy games that are defective by design. We need to send a clear and strong message that we want to be able to pick up a retro game 10 years from now and it still be as playable as the day we bought it. This is why any DRM is bad also.

And if this isn't good enough, I could also just simply retort with "used bookstores didn't kill book publishing."

daedalus wrote:I don't think I've ever sold a game, however, I don't like the secondhand market becoming crippled in such a way. Next time you walk into a vintage game shop, Slackers or whatever equivalent you might have around and you see that Nintendo 64 hanging on the wall, and you think to yourself "$42 and I could have two controllers, Goldeneye, two 40s of malt liquor, and fun for myself and a friend for the weekend? feth yes!", imagine now if they had some way of making it so that you couldn't play multiplayer if you hadn't originally bought the game yourself? How about if Smash Bros. only limited you to half the characters unless you bought it new? "No problem," you say, "I'll just buy the new copy, or I'll just send $5 to Nintendo to have them unbreak my game for me." Oh, wait, it's 10+ years old. You can't find it new, and even if you could, how do you know that the activation server is available still to bless your copy? It's effectively bit-rot. You see this a lot in computer gaming but with hardware no longer existing to run old software.

Granted, the game companies have already made their money and made off like bandits. They might, eventually, 10 years later, re-re-release Goldeneye on the "Super Wii 64", but you don't know that they ever will. Even then, it won't be the original experience, it will be on their new custom controllers that don't have the same feel, and probably with an engine overhaul so that it has more of a 'polished' look.

This is why this is bad. This is why people need to not buy games that are defective by design. We need to send a clear and strong message that we want to be able to pick up a retro game 10 years from now and it still be as playable as the day we bought it. This is why any DRM is bad also.

And if this isn't good enough, I could also just simply retort with "used bookstores didn't kill book publishing."

And game companies should care about this WHY?

Vintage video gaming earns them no money and is a niche market. Companies need to look forward NOT backward.

And again, people buying vintage games are NOT customers of these companies.

Please, give me a real reasonable and logical(ie. not emotional or nostalgic) reason why vintage game players should be considered by companies making games.

daedalus wrote:And if this isn't good enough, I could also just simply retort with "used bookstores didn't kill book publishing."

That's actually a pretty good point.

Platuan4th wrote:

And game companies should care about this WHY?

Vintage video gaming earns them no money and is a niche market. Companies need to look forward NOT backward.

And again, people buying vintage games are NOT customers of these companies.

Please, give me a real reasonable and logical(ie. not emotional or nostalgic) reason why vintage game players should be considered by companies making games.

Because if people looked ahead in time more than 15 minutes and didn't seem to be under the mentality that companies can force them to buy their products, then they might become selective and possibly even resentful of an industry looking to hamstring them in such a way. Also, because it will INCREASE piracy, not the other way around.

And again, used bookstores didn't kill book publishers.

daedalus wrote:

Platuan4th wrote:

And game companies should care about this WHY?

Vintage video gaming earns them no money and is a niche market. Companies need to look forward NOT backward.

And again, people buying vintage games are NOT customers of these companies.

Please, give me a real reasonable and logical(ie. not emotional or nostalgic) reason why vintage game players should be considered by companies making games.

Because if people looked ahead in time more than 15 minutes and didn't seem to be under the mentality that companies can force them to buy their products, then they might become selective and possibly even resentful of an industry looking to hamstring them in such a way. Also, because it will INCREASE piracy, not the other way around.

No company is forcing us to buy their products. And the only people they're "hamstringing" are people who are choosing to be(especially since it's generally only $5-10 dollars more to buy new over used at places that resell). I actually do buy used and vintage/retro games, but I do so knowing that I'm at a disadvantage over new(the disc is lower quality due to use, the system may not be supported, I don't get the benefits of pre-orders or release offers, I lose out on the option to return defective product, etc.). This is just one more thing you need to learn and inform yourself on.

Also, I don't feel your used bookstore analogy really works, as the majority of books don't have a shelf life where they're published for 2-4 years then never printed again.

Grundz wrote:\There is, the difference being that one was willing to get the game, maybe, but got it used for whatever reason, price, sales pitch, some gamestop offer, whatever.

And the other was willing to break laws to get it. Either way, the developers get nothing from the sale (or lack thereof), so the distinction is unimportant.


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Monster Rain wrote:

daedalus wrote:And if this isn't good enough, I could also just simply retort with "used bookstores didn't kill book publishing."

That's actually a pretty good point.

No it isn't, it takes far more resources and capital to make even a five dollar indy game than it does a full length novel.

Melissia wrote:

Grundz wrote:\There is, the difference being that one was willing to get the game, maybe, but got it used for whatever reason, price, sales pitch, some gamestop offer, whatever.

And the other was willing to break laws to get it. Either way, the developers get nothing from the sale (or lack thereof), so the distinction is unimportant.

I'm sorry for telling you how it is, I'll let you wallow next time you make inaccurate sweeping generalizations on something I have in depth knowledge about, have a nice day.

Platuan4th wrote:
Also, I don't feel your used bookstore analogy really works, as the majority of books don't have a shelf life where they're published for 2-4 years then never printed again.

Which is all that much more reason why this kind of policy isn't good (for enthusiasts).

I'm picturing it now.

Old daedalus: You found a copy of RAGE and you're playing it now? (watch him play) Man, when I was younger, games were so much better.
icarus: Sure, dad.
Old daedalus: No, seriously, it WAS better.

Melissia wrote:lol, I have no problem with policies like this. The companies don't profit from used sales, so they have no reason to serve people who buy the game used equally compared to those who buy new.

Wolfun wrote:
This. The only reason why people don't like this, or project 10 dollar, is because they're cheap.

However, it's places like Gamestop (especially when I've heard they'll buy games for a few bucks and then try to sell them at $20) who are making all that money, not the people who made the game.

That's why I always buy new.

Polonius wrote:Digital content is one area where used sales really, really hurt producers.

If I buy a used car, I get less car than if I bought it new. If I buy a used 40k army, I have to put time and effort into fixing/setting it up.

If I buy a used video game... I've got the exact video game. There's no natural depreciation that encourages new sales. Computer game makers realized long ago that they need to put enough content into a game to make people actually buy it. There's little market for "used" computer games.

It seems to me that offering more content for the people that actually pay full price is a good way to encourage people to, well, pay full price.

As they say, "you get what you pay for."

This. Absolutely this. 100% agreed. If you guys don't like it, don't buy the game, theres no reason to complain otherwise, nobody is MAKING you buy the game, nor is this a product that you need to have.

Besides that, I don't understand why this is so shocking, game companies started doing this years ago (Battlefield Bad Company 2 is one of the first IIRC).

Grundz wrote:This is slightly different from just providing DLC to purchasing users on launch, they are just adding it on the front end instead of the back end, which is negative. instead of getting something new and exciting for buying it from XYZ , we are instead takings something away.

Not really. I have yet to seem content that is really part of the main game. In Rage for example, its 'sidequests' that people didn't even know of until they read the article linked in the first post. Its often extra gameplay modes, extra gear, weapons etc, that is nonessential to enjoying the game. If you want the EXTRA stuff, buy it at full price, if its not important to you, get it used. Since its clearly important to you have to have this extra stuff that isn't part of the main plotline, an integral part of the game, or a core gameplay element advertised as being in the game out of the box, you clearly DESIRE this extra content. You should therefore purchase it at its full price, since what you want is NOT INTEGRAL to the game.

daedalus wrote:I don't think I've ever sold a game, however, I don't like the secondhand market becoming crippled in such a way. Next time you walk into a vintage game shop, Slackers or whatever equivalent you might have around and you see that Nintendo 64 hanging on the wall, and you think to yourself "$42 and I could have two controllers, Goldeneye, two 40s of malt liquor, and fun for myself and a friend for the weekend? feth yes!", imagine now if they had some way of making it so that you couldn't play multiplayer if you hadn't originally bought the game yourself? How about if Smash Bros. only limited you to half the characters unless you bought it new? "No problem," you say, "I'll just buy the new copy, or I'll just send $5 to Nintendo to have them unbreak my game for me." Oh, wait, it's 10+ years old. You can't find it new, and even if you could, how do you know that the activation server is available still to bless your copy? It's effectively bit-rot. You see this a lot in computer gaming but with hardware no longer existing to run old software.

This is an illogical argument. The cost of a 10+ year old used game plus DLC will be CHEAPER than a new copy of the game...

And again, as other posters (and Penny Arcade) have stated, you are not a customer of the developer/publisher if you purchased used, why should they be interested in your opinion of their practice if you're not supporting them in any way.

Grundz wrote:I'm sorry for telling you how it is

Really, huh, where'd you do tha-- oh wait you didn't.

There's technical differences, but to the bottom line of the developer they're irrelevant. Kinda like the differences between being rejected from a job offer because you were underqualified, or being rejected because you're overqualified-- the difference, to the unemployed person, is unimportant, because they still don't have a goddamned job.

Melissia wrote:No it isn't, it takes far more resources and capital to make even a five dollar indy game than it does a full length novel.

And you generally charge more for even the lowest rent game than you do for the cheapest book. I can go to the dollar store and buy cheap information printed on bound paper. Sometimes even two sets for a dollar. It won't be very good, but it's there. At the same time, I can buy VERY good information printed on bound paper for $100+.

Perhaps games aren't being valued properly? Perhaps they do not produce an efficient amount of capital per the resources put in to them?

Hollywood manages to survive as well.

daedalus wrote:And you generally charge more for even the lowest rent game than you do for the cheapest book.

And the reason for this is becaaaaause....

Melissia wrote:[...] it takes far more resources and capital to make even a five dollar indy game than it does a full length novel.

And actually many books cost 20-30 USD for a ~350-400 page book. There's quite a few independent games that are cheaper than that despite taking more capital and investment to make than the book.

And if you're talking about AAA titles, well, those take millions of dollars and tons of investment to make on average.

Melissia wrote:
There's technical differences, but to the bottom line of the developer they're irrelevant.

How many developers do you know? have worked for? from what knowledge are you drawing this conclusion?

Grundz wrote:How many developers do you know?

Know in a general sense, not a personal sense? I've chatted with various developers from Kaos, Gas Powered Games, and Relic, as well as people from THQ, the producer for all of these developers.

Grundz wrote:from what knowledge are you drawing this conclusion?

Because that's pretty much the statements made by THQ and its various developers on the subject.

Exact quote from Cory Ledesma, THQ's creative director, is [link]:

"I don't think we really care whether used game buyers are upset because new game buyers get everything. So if used game buyers are upset they don't get the online feature set I don't really have much sympathy for them."

"That's a little blunt but we hope it doesn't disappoint people. We hope people understand that when the game's bought used we get cheated," he continued.

THQ (and likely most other producers and developers) doesn't really care what used game buyers think. They're not their customers, they didn't give any money to the producer/developer. The devs don't owe the buyers of used games anything, they only owe actual customers a good gaming experience.

daedalus wrote:

Melissia wrote:No it isn't, it takes far more resources and capital to make even a five dollar indy game than it does a full length novel.

And you generally charge more for even the lowest rent game than you do for the cheapest book. I can go to the dollar store and buy cheap information printed on bound paper. Sometimes even two sets for a dollar. It won't be very good, but it's there. At the same time, I can buy VERY good information printed on bound paper for $100+.

And also at the same time, you can buy VERY bad information(ie. self-published book or "urban fiction") for a surprising amount of money.

Grundz wrote:

Melissia wrote:
There's technical differences, but to the bottom line of the developer they're irrelevant.

How many developers do you know? have worked for? from what knowledge are you drawing this conclusion?

Plenty, and I can tell you that they don't give a flying feth.

chaos0xomega wrote:
This is an illogical argument. The cost of a 10+ year old used game plus DLC will be CHEAPER than a new copy of the game...

Indeed. So cheap it won't cost you a dime, because you won't be able to find it. You'll probably be able to find the game, sure. Where are you getting the DLC from? The company that stopped selling the game 10 years ago? They might have and offer it still.

Listen, I'm not pissed about the fact that the used guy has to pay still for it. I mean, I am, but that's not the drive behind my argument. I'm arguing that it just WON'T BE THERE. If there was a way to guarantee that the extra content, whatever it was, would exist in perpetuity somewhere for a flat fee, then great. But we're talking about what is effectively evaporating art here, and that's not cool.

daedalus wrote:Listen, I'm not pissed about the fact that the used guy has to pay still for it. I mean, I am, but that's not the drive behind my argument. I'm arguing that it just WON'T BE THERE.

Then you should start a thread bashing ALL DLC, rather than drag this one off topic with your hatred of DLC? Because ALL DLC will have this problem.

Melissia wrote:

daedalus wrote:And you generally charge more for even the lowest rent game than you do for the cheapest book.

And the reason for this is becaaaaause....

Melissia wrote:[...] it takes far more resources and capital to make even a five dollar indy game than it does a full length novel.

And actually many books cost 20-30 USD for a ~350-400 page book. There's quite a few independent games that are cheaper than that despite taking more capital and investment to make than the book.

And if you're talking about AAA titles, well, those take millions of dollars and tons of investment to make on average.

Fine. Now explain how Hollywood survives.


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Melissia wrote:

daedalus wrote:Listen, I'm not pissed about the fact that the used guy has to pay still for it. I mean, I am, but that's not the drive behind my argument. I'm arguing that it just WON'T BE THERE.

Then you should start a thread bashing ALL DLC, rather than drag this one off topic with your hatred of DLC? Because ALL DLC will have this problem.

Fair enough.

daedalus wrote:Fine. Now explain how Hollywood survives.

Through movie theaters, theatrical re-releases, special editions, extended editions, platinum editions, director's cut editions, special extended platinum director's cut editions, etc.

Used copies of games don't require extra servers, extra technical support or anything extra on the part of the developers or publishers. No extra resources are used by people selling on their used games. To the company that makes them there is no difference (other than a change in IP address) to denote one person having sold the game on to someone else.

DLC such as map packs, extra skins etc are things that will add money to the coffers without forcing you to buy an "online pass" or "core game content" if you buy second hand and are things that will, presumably, be bought by multiple people down the purchase chain. If I see a game that requires me to purchase extra passes etc if I get it second hand it is not getting bought.

They just want another slice of the pie. Price your games so they are not pushing £50 for a new title and/or actually give us a game that is worth the money and more people might buy new.

SilverMK2 wrote:They just want another slice of the pie.

And why shouldn't they get money from someone who is buying their game? There's nothing inherently wrong with that. Heck that's how royalties work in any other industry.

Someone buys the game, then sells it to gamestop, who sells it to another person, who then sells it to gamestop, who sells it to another person, who then sells it to gamestop, who sells it to another person, who then sells it to gamestop, who sells it to another person.

And despite five people having bought and played the game, the developers only got money from one of them.

Therefor to the developers, the four who bought used are not customers. They don't give a damn what those non-customers think. After all, they're not customers. They only care what the first one thinks. That's the only person they're responsible to, as that's the only person whose purchase resulted in them getting money.

Melissia wrote:

SilverMK2 wrote:They just want another slice of the pie.

And why shouldn't they get money from someone who is buying their game? There's nothing inherently wrong with that. Heck that's how royalties work in any other industry.

It is not how it works in any other industry when people sell goods on. 2nd hand car dealers don't need to pay a percentage on to the manufacturer of the car when they sell on and buyers don't need to send a cheque to Ford when they buy a second hand Fiesta in order to get the radio to pick up more than classic FM. The majority of car manufactures seem to be more than happy to embrace the 2nd hand market by selling used cars right along side their new stock rather than try to kill it.

SilverMK2 wrote:It is not how it works in any other industry when people sell goods on.

And? Most other industries have other caveats that allow the manufacturers/developers/producers/etc to profit off of used markets.

And if you honestly think that the book industry doesn't absolutely loathe the used book market, you haven't paid much attention. They pass around fliers and put advertisements in their books asking people not to sell the book to a used book store, they practically go around BEGGING people to not buy used and instead to buy new. If book publishers could do what the gaming industry is doing right now, they would in a heartbeat, they'd do it so fast there'd be a fething dust cloud and trail right out of a Loony Toons cartoon behind them.

The only thing that's stopping them is that they basically physically can't because of the nature of their product.

SilverMK2 wrote:Used copies of games don't require extra servers, extra technical support or anything extra on the part of the developers or publishers. No extra resources are used by people selling on their used games. To the company that makes them there is no difference (other than a change in IP address) to denote one person having sold the game on to someone else.

We're not talking about Dave selling it to Joe.

We're talking about shops like GameStop which buy the games 'Like New'(usually only offering store credit or having a very specific '30 day' window where you can get 20% more for your sellback) and then resell them for almost retail prices, of which absolutely none of it goes to the developers.

DLC such as map packs, extra skins etc are things that will add money to the coffers without forcing you to buy an "online pass" or "core game content" if you buy second hand and are things that will, presumably, be bought by multiple people down the purchase chain. If I see a game that requires me to purchase extra passes etc if I get it second hand it is not getting bought.

Yes, it's annoying but the secondhand market is also becoming stupidly ludicrous for the companies which run them. Gamestop and EB Games make absurd amounts because people will buy a new game "Preowned" for $2 less than the retail price.

They just want another slice of the pie. Price your games so they are not pushing £50 for a new title and/or actually give us a game that is worth the money and more people might buy new.

Highly doubt that a price drop would do anything about it, to be frank.

Melissia wrote:

daedalus wrote:Fine. Now explain how Hollywood survives.

Through movie theaters, theatrical re-releases, special editions, extended editions, platinum editions, director's cut editions, special extended platinum director's cut editions, etc.

Absolutely, I have the special extended super rad shiny einsteinium copy of Starcraft 2 that came out. I thought about getting the one for Fallout 3 also, but I'm glad I opted for the normal edition of that. I've been kind of bummed because I haven't seen "The Complete Ultima Collection" come up in stores recently. I'm kind of concerned I might have missed out on my chance to buy that. Hopefully the EA Vault will rerelease it soon.

With the exception of movie theaters, those opportunities are all there (and, in some cases, being exercised). Not really sure what the analogue to theaters would be. Tournaments, maybe? I think those actually used to be kind of big in the 90s. Maybe the companies could drum up interest in their games and make a few bucks that way.

Mind you, I'm also paying on average two to five times the amount for a video game that I do for most movies.

Melissia wrote:

Grundz wrote:How many developers do you know?

Know in a general sense, not a personal sense? I've chatted with various developers from Kaos, Gas Powered Games, and Relic, as well as people from THQ, the producer for all of these developers.

Grundz wrote:from what knowledge are you drawing this conclusion?

Because that's pretty much the statements made by THQ and its various developers on the subject.

Exact quote from Cory Ledesma, THQ's creative director, is [link]:

"I don't think we really care whether used game buyers are upset because new game buyers get everything. So if used game buyers are upset they don't get the online feature set I don't really have much sympathy for them."

"That's a little blunt but we hope it doesn't disappoint people. We hope people understand that when the game's bought used we get cheated," he continued.

THQ (and likely most other producers and developers) doesn't really care what used game buyers think. They're not their customers, they didn't give any money to the producer/developer. The devs don't owe the buyers of used games anything, they only owe actual customers a good gaming experience.

You are correct, the CEO of the producing company saying that he has no sympathy for someone that buys a used game is the same thing as the developer creating changes to the product in question under the direction of marketing.
You win, or just can't/refuse to/ see the difference, or just like to argue to balloon your post count, or something, I'm not sure.

Melissia wrote:If book publishers could do what the gaming industry is doing right now, they would in a heartbeat, they'd do it so fast there'd be a fething dust cloud and trail right out of a Loony Toons cartoon behind them.

The only thing that's stopping them is that they basically physically can't because of the nature of their product.

Actually, they tried something vaguely similar once upon a time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobbs-Merrill_Co._v._Straus

It was one of those rare flashes of insight that got us First Sale Doctrine.

They're still trying it, in fact, with the eBook markets.

daedalus wrote:Mind you, I'm also paying on average two to five times the amount for a video game that I do for most movies.

I'd say how much mroe I'm paying for games than movies, but I'd not want to have to divide by zero. I don't watch movies anymore... too expensive for so little entertainment value...

Melissia wrote:

SilverMK2 wrote:It is not how it works in any other industry when people sell goods on.

And? Most other industries have other caveats that allow the manufacturers/developers/producers/etc to profit off of used markets.

And if you honestly think that the book industry doesn't absolutely loathe the used book market, you haven't paid much attention. They pass around fliers and put advertisements in their books asking people not to sell the book to a used book store, they practically go around BEGGING people to not buy used and instead to buy new. If book publishers could do what the gaming industry is doing right now, they would in a heartbeat, they'd do it so fast there'd be a fething dust cloud and trail right out of a Loony Toons cartoon behind them.

To borrow a phrase from you: And?

If we could stop people doing things we didn't want them doing just because we didn't want them doing it the world would probably explode. As I said initially - used games don't cost games companies any more - they don't need to invest in more servers, more coders or anything. In the same way that we all (well, most of us ) can see that GW is loosing sales by raising prices, games companies can learn a lot from reducing prices and selling more units new - but then there would be more copies in circulation so they would actually need to invest more money in supporting their game

They just want to grab even more money.

@ Kan - so, you don't have a problem with used games as such, you just have a problem with people making money from it? There is nothing stopping Rage and other developers setting up their own stores to sell second hand games. But then that would be a whole other expense for them and they just want to make money for free... kind of like the 2nd hand game stores... expect, you know, without any actual additional expenses...

Melissia wrote:They're still trying it, in fact, with the eBook markets.

daedalus wrote:Mind you, I'm also paying on average two to five times the amount for a video game that I do for most movies.

I'd say how much mroe I'm paying for games than movies, but I'd not want to have to divide by zero. I don't watch movies anymore... too expensive for so little entertainment value...

I do watch movies, but between Redbox($1 a movie) and Netflix(~$8 or 9 a month since I only use the streaming service) and only buying movies I REALLY want to own, the price is negligible.

Then again, I really only buy 2-3 video games on average a year. Last year was a fluke in that I bought nearly 7(including vintage games to replace some lost in Katrina) . However, I'm NOT including the 20 that came with the older thick style PS2 I bought, since I've only touched one(SOCOM II to make sure the system and controllers worked) to replace the one lost to same.

SilverMK2 wrote:To borrow a phrase from you: And?

And... my point is obviously that your counterpoint to my previous stated point is pointless and not actually a counter to my point..

SilverMK2 wrote:
@ Kan - so, you don't have a problem with used games as such, you just have a problem with people making money from it? There is nothing stopping Rage and other developers setting up their own stores to sell second hand games. But then that would be a whole other expense for them and they just want to make money for free... kind of like the 2nd hand game stores... except, you know, without any actual additional expenses...

The "2nd hand gamestores" aren't stores dedicated exclusively to selling second hand games. They run it as a side business, which is as you put it, giving them "money for free".

They already have the shops and the employees. They, officially, are selling "new" games and consoles. But they buy the stuff in question back from people at a steal and then resell it for a stupid amount, and then furthermore go to pull crap like we saw where they were pulling the promotional codes out of games and selling them by themselves.

If you can come up with a way for Bethesda, Bungie, etc to run a "buyback" program that doesn't lose them money--I'm sure they'd be interested. Because otherwise, they're going to be shelling out a rather large amount in shipping costs or having people whine about how they "had to pay to send the game back for the Buyback Program".

Kanluwen wrote:See, that's actually the thing that causes the problems in the developers' eyes.

You get a lot of these single player games(The Force Unleashed, for example) where people buy them brand new at launch--and then trade them in as soon as they do one playthrough. Gamestop will pay something like $35-$40 on the title depending on how 'in demand' it is. They then resell it for $52 or $57 as "PREOWNED", and they pocket the difference entirely on their own since the developers and publishers are only paid for the original sale.

But what does this guy that just sold "The Force Unleashed" do with the $35-$40 he just spent? He buys another game, brand new. Without that $35-$40 that he made selling his old game, he couldn't/wouldn't buy the next one, and possibly wouldn't have bought the first one. This type of customer is going to have a real hard time justifying $60+ on a game they will only play once (maybe 40 hours of play), but $20 for 40 hours of entertainment might be easier to justify. With the used market, this guy can buy 3 times the games that he could without. If even half of the games he sold were then bought by a person who would not have paid full price, then the developer is making more money this way.

For example, let's say this guy has $120 in disposable income per year. Games are $60 per game, with resale at $40. He buys 6 games per year ($360) and sells 6 ($240) for a net of $120 spent. Developers make $360 off game sales. Now, assuming 50% of those people that bought his used games would have bought new, and resale is not allowed: Our guy buys 2 games ($120) and 50% of the 6 is 3, so another 3 people buy games ($180). Developers make $300 instead of $360. In order for the numbers to become equal, you have to assume that 75% of the people buying used, would buy new if forced to.

What do you guys think? Do you think 3 out of 4 people that walk into a game store, would pay full price for all their games if there was no used market? I don't think so.

There is a humongous difference between a software pirate and a used game buyer. The used game buyer was willing to pay money for your product! It is a lot easier to convince a person that is already paying money for what you sell, to spend that money with you, then it is to convince someone getting the item for free to switch to paying.

Here's one: Game company takes the game back, either mail them back the discs, or the game becomes deregistered in Steam, or whatever, and offer a percentage of 'credit' toward another game, make it something comparable with what you would get for a trade-in at GameStop. Perhaps even a percentage more, as you want to make it just lucrative enough, and that way you're not 'losing' the copy to someone else who will simply reap the benefits. You then allow people to use the credit toward new games and continue to offer 'preowned' copies via mail order if people want the actual disks.

Literally just suck all the business out of GameStop. All it would take for Steam to facilitate this right now would be to simply strike up agreements with the game studios.

Tye_Informer wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:See, that's actually the thing that causes the problems in the developers' eyes.

You get a lot of these single player games(The Force Unleashed, for example) where people buy them brand new at launch--and then trade them in as soon as they do one playthrough. Gamestop will pay something like $35-$40 on the title depending on how 'in demand' it is. They then resell it for $52 or $57 as "PREOWNED", and they pocket the difference entirely on their own since the developers and publishers are only paid for the original sale.

But what does this guy that just sold "The Force Unleashed" do with the $35-$40 he just spent? He buys another game, brand new. Without that $35-$40 that he made selling his old game, he couldn't/wouldn't buy the next one, and possibly wouldn't have bought the first one. This type of customer is going to have a real hard time justifying $60+ on a game they will only play once (maybe 40 hours of play), but $20 for 40 hours of entertainment might be easier to justify. With the used market, this guy can buy 3 times the games that he could without. If even half of the games he sold were then bought by a person who would not have paid full price, then the developer is making more money this way.

Which does not matter to the developer. He is not guaranteed to spend that $35-$40 on a 'new' game, especially with the shady practices used by companies like GameStop where the trade-ins only get you store credit, and they shove "deals" in the form of "Buy X preowned games, get Y games(only available as preowned) for Z% off!"

There is a humongous difference between a software pirate and a used game buyer. The used game buyer was willing to pay money for your product! It is a lot easier to convince a person that is already paying money for what you sell, to spend that money with you, then it is to convince someone getting the item for free to switch to paying.

Debatable. The "deals" and "store credit" towards preowned games that draw people into buying preowned games from the shops that focus majorly on the preowned market draw in the people who aren't actually interested in the games, but rather whoring out their Achievement/Trophy scores. It encourages the constant buying of preowned and trading them back in for store credit towards other preowned games.

They just want another slice of the pie.

Interesting, so the game companies are greedy for wanting you to buy the game new, but this doesn't apply to Gamestop where they want to essentially sell the same copy of the same game ten times? And yeah, they do pay some (relatively small) amount of cash to buy the game back, but an overwhelming majority of the time, that goes right back into Gamestop's coffers when the customer spends it on more games (often used).

What I find even more insulting is half the time the used game is like $3 less than new. I mean, Christ, I might as well just fork over the extra three bucks and buy a shiny new shrink-wrapped copy.

RatBot wrote:
What I find even more insulting is half the time the used game is like $3 less than new. I mean, Christ, I might as well just fork over the extra three bucks and buy a shiny new shrink-wrapped copy.

And then you get that intoxicating "new game" smell. It's like opening up a tube of tennis balls for the first time.

I don't, it just seems like a token gesture to sell a used game for such a tiny discount. It probably matters less to me because I buy like one game every four months on average. Perhaps if I was the type of person to walk into the store and buy a huge stack of games in one go I'd appreciate it more.

RatBot wrote:Interesting, so the game companies are greedy for wanting you to buy the game new, but this doesn't apply to Gamestop where they want to essentially sell the same copy of the same game ten times?

I don't recall ever said that there isn't money being made. What I am saying is that the second hand market is not costing the games companies any money. The vast majority of all my console games are pre-owned because it is usually cheaper (though the cost drop these days does not seem to be as good as it used to be). Almost all of my PC games are bought new.

The reason? PC games cost less than console games, have more features (most of the time), free DLC, or free community made DLC anyway (or just DLC in general). I buy them new because they are worth buying new. Console games; what do I really get for buying new? The fuzzy feeling of handing over lots of my money to a games company? The knowledge that I could have bought it £10-£20 cheaper if I had bought it new on PC? Or I could have got it for £5-10 cheaper buying it pre-owned (for relatively new games)?

Things are worth what people are willing to pay for them, and the prevalence of the 2nd hand gaming market, as well as its value that games companies want a slice of, is absolutely huge, which would indicate that a lot of people are not willing to pay "buy as new" prices for a game you can blow through in 5 hours on the hardest setting, which is no different from 1000's of other titles and which you will forget within days.

SilverMK2 wrote:

RatBot wrote:Interesting, so the game companies are greedy for wanting you to buy the game new, but this doesn't apply to Gamestop where they want to essentially sell the same copy of the same game ten times?

I don't recall ever said that there isn't money being made. What I am saying is that the second hand market is not costing the games companies any money. The vast majority of all my console games are pre-owned because it is usually cheaper (though the cost drop these days does not seem to be as good as it used to be). Almost all of my PC games are bought new.

The reason? PC games cost less than console games, have more features (most of the time), free DLC, or free community made DLC anyway (or just DLC in general). I buy them new because they are worth buying new. Console games; what do I really get for buying new? The fuzzy feeling of handing over lots of my money to a games company? The knowledge that I could have bought it £10-£20 cheaper if I had bought it new on PC? Or I could have got it for £5-10 cheaper buying it pre-owned (for relatively new games)?

Things are worth what people are willing to pay for them, and the prevalence of the 2nd hand gaming market, as well as its value that games companies want a slice of, is absolutely huge, which would indicate that a lot of people are not willing to pay "buy as new" prices for a game you can blow through in 5 hours on the hardest setting, which is no different from 1000's of other titles and which you will forget within days.

This is a good point, I suppose, and admittedly one I hadn't considered since I don't own a current gen console and play PC games exclusively. I actually didn't even really realize that Console games are now $60 a pop brand new? L. O. L.

I don't think the nearest Gamestop even stocks PC games (dunno, I moved recently, haven't been in, took a peek through the front window a didn't see any). I get 'em from the Best Buy next door.

daedalus wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
This is an illogical argument. The cost of a 10+ year old used game plus DLC will be CHEAPER than a new copy of the game...

Indeed. So cheap it won't cost you a dime, because you won't be able to find it. You'll probably be able to find the game, sure. Where are you getting the DLC from? The company that stopped selling the game 10 years ago? They might have and offer it still.

Listen, I'm not pissed about the fact that the used guy has to pay still for it. I mean, I am, but that's not the drive behind my argument. I'm arguing that it just WON'T BE THERE. If there was a way to guarantee that the extra content, whatever it was, would exist in perpetuity somewhere for a flat fee, then great. But we're talking about what is effectively evaporating art here, and that's not cool.

I don't know how XBL works, but in terms of the Playstation Network, the DLC data is maintained in Sony's database/servers. There is no DLC available for games that old because they simply don't exist, but there is DLC for games that were released when the PS3 first came out, which is something like what 4 or 5 years ago? I know I purchased a game recently (Lair) that had DLC available for it from '07, as well as instantly being patched to the latest version (whatever that was/whenever that was released) when I went to start it up.I assume XBL works similarly.

Used copies of games don't require extra servers, extra technical support or anything extra on the part of the developers or publishers. No extra resources are used by people selling on their used games. To the company that makes them there is no difference (other than a change in IP address) to denote one person having sold the game on to someone else.

I've heard you argue this before, and its as flawed an argument now as it was then. While it doesn't 'cost anything extra', it still requires the maintenance cost to upkeep the servers, pay the tech support crew, and to pay the developers to patch the game. That cost doesn't change. The money used to pay these people and maintain/upgrade these systems so that you can utilize and play the game, as well as so that the developer can continue to pay people to develop NEW GAMES, COMES FROM PURCHASING NEW COPIES OF THE GAME. By purchasing a used copy of the game, you are essentially piggy backing in off of someone else, for all intents and purposes, you are a parasite, taking what you want without giving anything back to the system and its associated workplace economy. While you aren't adding any extra load to the servers or anything, you are accelerating the degradation of the system by denying the developer an additional revenue stream which is used to maintain it and improve it.

As for other DLC, such as map packs, etc. what percentage of games purchasers ever actually pay for most of that stuff? I know I very rarely do, ditto most of my friends. I would say that its a very limited source for additional revenue for the developers, might be enough to cover some functions, but it won't make up for all the lost sales resulting from a used game.

You clearly seem to be interested (otherwise why are you arguing about it so much?) in acquiring this extra content offered as a reward to people who support the company... yet you refuse to do so and shell out some extra cash. It seems kinda odd to me. BTW, the cost of a new video game is actually less now than it was years ago. Video game price points have been and continue to be well below the rate of inflation. An atari game or whathaveyou from way back when costs approx. 120 USD in today's terms, while a PS1 era game would be approx 90 USD in todays terms IIRC. While the actual dollar amount might seem higher, you have to take into consideration the actual worth of a dollar as well.

I also find it odd that you complain that the developers want another slice of the pie (more like they want a slice of the pie that was stolen from them, which is perfectly understandable) and not of the used game retailers that are making a killing off the practice. The average amount of money I receive from trading in a used game is less than 10 dollars, unless its a new game that came out earlier that week in which case its usually less than 20, and that is in store credit... so I am then forced to either provide them with more of my money if I don't have enough for another purchase, or I purchase another game from them using the credit I have, in which case I effectively traded 5 to 10 games (depending, in some case more than that) for 1. Gamestop will then resell that game (or those games) for several times the price they paid for it. You don't think Gamestop wants too large a slice of pie for giving me 7 USD for a game and then selling it the next day for 34.99? Perhaps I would agree with you if those numbers were a little more balanced, but they on average resell for 400% profit.

Besides, the way I see it, the practice of rewarding people who purchase a new copy of a game is way better than the practices that CAPCOM and certain other companies have engaged in, whereby they rerelease the game approx 1 year later with more content (usually extra characters/weapons, etc.), but they don't offer that content as DLC to the people who purchased the original game at all, forcing them to purchase it again if they want to have a fully enabled game.

Melissia wrote:

daedalus wrote:Listen, I'm not pissed about the fact that the used guy has to pay still for it. I mean, I am, but that's not the drive behind my argument. I'm arguing that it just WON'T BE THERE.

Then you should start a thread bashing ALL DLC, rather than drag this one off topic with your hatred of DLC? Because ALL DLC will have this problem.

That's not really a fair comparison, though; DLC is ADDITIONAL Content that isn't required to play through the full game. What they are doing here is locking part of the game unless you can provide some sort of activation which simply won't be there after those ten years.

More replies as follows, saw this and had to reply.

Slarg232 wrote:

Melissia wrote:

daedalus wrote:Listen, I'm not pissed about the fact that the used guy has to pay still for it. I mean, I am, but that's not the drive behind my argument. I'm arguing that it just WON'T BE THERE.

Then you should start a thread bashing ALL DLC, rather than drag this one off topic with your hatred of DLC? Because ALL DLC will have this problem.

That's not really a fair comparison, though; DLC is ADDITIONAL Content that isn't required to play through the full game. What they are doing here is locking part of the game unless you can provide some sort of activation which simply won't be there after those ten years.

More replies as follows, saw this and had to reply.

Did you actually read the article?

“If you bought the game new, [the sewer hatches] would be open for you. You still have to download [the Online Pass], but you don’t have to pay for it. Those hatches are all over. Most people never find them. But as soon as you do, you’re like, oh. And then you start to look for it. That’s our first-time buyer incentive. But as you can tell, most people never even see it.“

It looks like it's content that has to be activated by the Online Pass, but is present in the game no matter what.
This is no different than the Dragon Age items that come with your 'new' purchase of the game.

Kanluwen wrote:

Slarg232 wrote:

Melissia wrote:

daedalus wrote:Listen, I'm not pissed about the fact that the used guy has to pay still for it. I mean, I am, but that's not the drive behind my argument. I'm arguing that it just WON'T BE THERE.

Then you should start a thread bashing ALL DLC, rather than drag this one off topic with your hatred of DLC? Because ALL DLC will have this problem.

That's not really a fair comparison, though; DLC is ADDITIONAL Content that isn't required to play through the full game. What they are doing here is locking part of the game unless you can provide some sort of activation which simply won't be there after those ten years.

More replies as follows, saw this and had to reply.

Did you actually read the article?

“If you bought the game new, [the sewer hatches] would be open for you. You still have to download [the Online Pass], but you don’t have to pay for it. Those hatches are all over. Most people never find them. But as soon as you do, you’re like, oh. And then you start to look for it. That’s our first-time buyer incentive. But as you can tell, most people never even see it.“

It looks like it's content that has to be activated by the Online Pass, but is present in the game no matter what.
This is no different than the Dragon Age items that come with your 'new' purchase of the game.

Ummm.... I posted the article, Kan......


I personally have no problem with a shiny Sword for buying Dragon Age 3 new. I don't have a problem with these little hatches being closed until you open them up.


What I don't like is that, once Activision or EA gets ahold of this sort of idea, they will start locking down half of the game. I have no problem with denying Used Game Buyers anything; I quite agree with it, and I am trying to go into the game industry myself.

What I am worried about, is people who buy a game New, keep it locked up for a while, the server for the game does down due to it's age, Bobby's Xbox Hard Drive breaks, and after tracking down a new Hard Drive for $300 (Due to inflation/what not), and suddenly he doesn't have access to the game he bought and payed for all that long ago; his Hard Drive broke, and so he lost his download, only now there is no way to download it again.

I mean, how many of us love to boot up the old NES or SNES or even Playstation1? Now imagine if our favorite games were right there, in our hands, but there is now NO way of being able to play them anymore?

Well, again, can't say I know about Xbox Live, but as I stated before, PSN stores all that data on its own servers (not EA/Activision) so unless Sony decides to drop the content (which it has yet to do), it'll be there, besides that, I think the data (like Serial Code based activation) is all tied to your PSN login as well...

the alternative is that the content is eventually all mashed up into a single patch that unlocks the stuff automatically after a certain while for everyone anyway (say when Sony/the developer determines that the game is now 'obsolete').

Personally, I would be more upset if I was one of those few unfortunate people that DON'T have internet access...

You're aware that EA publishes Dragon Age, right? And Dead Space, Battlefield, etc?

And you're also aware that the promotional DLC is stored on Xbox Live(can't speak for PSN, since I really have had no cause to use it), right?

And really if Bobby "keeps it locked up for awhile" and that "awhile" is long enough for the game's servers to go down, that's your own fault in my opinion. Even a relative flop of a game like Chromehounds had its servers live for almost what, three or four years?

Kanluwen wrote:You're aware that EA publishes Dragon Age, right? And Dead Space, Battlefield, etc?

And you're also aware that the promotional DLC is stored on Xbox Live(can't speak for PSN, since I really have had no cause to use it), right?

And really if Bobby "keeps it locked up for awhile" and that "awhile" is long enough for the game's servers to go down, that's your own fault in my opinion. Even a relative flop of a game like Chromehounds had its servers live for almost what, three or four years?

And you're aware that Microsoft takes items down if they need space and/or it hasn't sold for a while, right? And you can't tell me that wanting to play a game ten years after it's creation (Pong, Mortal Kombat, Adventure, the original Legend of Zelda, Harvest Moon, Earthbound), and having these things ONLY available in digital format, where if your HD breaks your completely 100% screwed, that is not your fault.

I'm not talking about Chromehounds, I'm talking about a Single Player game being only available if your willing to pay for the shell of the game, and then that shell is unfillable just because the only way to "fill" it, figuratively, is just simply not available anymore.

Slarg232 wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:You're aware that EA publishes Dragon Age, right? And Dead Space, Battlefield, etc?

And you're also aware that the promotional DLC is stored on Xbox Live(can't speak for PSN, since I really have had no cause to use it), right?

And really if Bobby "keeps it locked up for awhile" and that "awhile" is long enough for the game's servers to go down, that's your own fault in my opinion. Even a relative flop of a game like Chromehounds had its servers live for almost what, three or four years?

And you're aware that Microsoft takes items down if they need space and/or it hasn't sold for a while, right? And you can't tell me that wanting to play a game ten years after it's creation (Pong, Mortal Kombat, Adventure, the original Legend of Zelda, Harvest Moon, Earthbound), and having these things ONLY available in digital format, where if your HD breaks your completely 100% screwed, that is not your fault.

You keep saying this. You're talking about a situation where if your HD breaks that you'd be screwed, but in reality you are not completely 100% screwed. If your HD breaks, you can redownload the material without having to purchase it again.

I'm not talking about Chromehounds, I'm talking about a Single Player game being only available if your willing to pay for the shell of the game, and then that shell is unfillable just because the only way to "fill" it, figuratively, is just simply not available anymore.

Find me an XBL game that has had its DLC removed.

No, seriously. I'd love to see some proof of your statement about "Microsoft taking items down if they need space and/or it hasn't sold for a while".

The only stuff I'm aware of offhand would be the Marvel beat em up RPG games had character DLC's removed, but that was copyright issues, not "space or lack of purchase".

SilverMK2 wrote:Almost all of my PC games are bought new.

The reason?

Because they arent' sold used in the first place.

Kanluwen wrote:

Slarg232 wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:You're aware that EA publishes Dragon Age, right? And Dead Space, Battlefield, etc?

And you're also aware that the promotional DLC is stored on Xbox Live(can't speak for PSN, since I really have had no cause to use it), right?

And really if Bobby "keeps it locked up for awhile" and that "awhile" is long enough for the game's servers to go down, that's your own fault in my opinion. Even a relative flop of a game like Chromehounds had its servers live for almost what, three or four years?

And you're aware that Microsoft takes items down if they need space and/or it hasn't sold for a while, right? And you can't tell me that wanting to play a game ten years after it's creation (Pong, Mortal Kombat, Adventure, the original Legend of Zelda, Harvest Moon, Earthbound), and having these things ONLY available in digital format, where if your HD breaks your completely 100% screwed, that is not your fault.

You keep saying this. You're talking about a situation where if your HD breaks that you'd be screwed, but in reality you are not completely 100% screwed. If your HD breaks, you can redownload the material without having to purchase it again.

I'm not talking about Chromehounds, I'm talking about a Single Player game being only available if your willing to pay for the shell of the game, and then that shell is unfillable just because the only way to "fill" it, figuratively, is just simply not available anymore.

Find me an XBL game that has had its DLC removed.

No, seriously. I'd love to see some proof of your statement about "Microsoft taking items down if they need space and/or it hasn't sold for a while".

UMK3 used to be on there, but was pulled off. I don't know why, the reason I was told was that it just took up too much room.

http://www.trmk.org/news/12845/midway_xbox_live_arcade_titles_removed_including_umk3_updated.html

Five seconds on Google netted me an answer.

Major Nelson of Xbox wrote:FYI: Some XBLA titles are no longer available for purchase from Xbox LIVE Arcade due to publisher evolving rights and permissions...

If you purchased it in the past, you WILL be able to re-download them...so don't worry.

The list of titles is: Cyberball, Defender, Paperboy, Rootbeer Tapper, Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, Robotron, Joust, Gauntlet & Smash TV

Look for discussion on the games that were removed on my show this week

If you purchased any of those titles...you will still be able to play them or redownload 'em. An no, it's not Game room related

I'm on the fence about the whole situation. On one hand, when someone buys a game, the company get's their money regardless. Whatever they do with the game after that should not matter because the company already go their money. On the other hand, I can see that if someone can't get a used copy, they might have more incentive to buy it brand new, thus turning a bit more profit for the company.

Another thing is that I feel that if you make a good game you don't have to worry about it because it will sell enough for you to make your money back. Look at Halo and gears for example. On the other hand, you still might lose a decent hunk of profit (that is in all likelihood small compared to revenue made anyways).

To be honest though, I've become strictly a PC gamer over the years, so this really doesn't effect me. More so, if a company does something with a game I don't like, all it takes is a single modder to crack it and fix the issues for me, which happens pretty often when devs pull one of their stunts.

Kanluwen wrote:http://www.trmk.org/news/12845/midway_xbox_live_arcade_titles_removed_including_umk3_updated.html

Five seconds on Google netted me an answer.

Major Nelson of Xbox wrote:FYI: Some XBLA titles are no longer available for purchase from Xbox LIVE Arcade due to publisher evolving rights and permissions...

If you purchased it in the past, you WILL be able to re-download them...so don't worry.

The list of titles is: Cyberball, Defender, Paperboy, Rootbeer Tapper, Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, Robotron, Joust, Gauntlet & Smash TV

Look for discussion on the games that were removed on my show this week

If you purchased any of those titles...you will still be able to play them or redownload 'em. An no, it's not Game room related

Still.... I just don't like this. I have that feeling.

Of what? Them doing nothing that isn't already in existence?

Seriously. This is no different than "Battle Codes" or "Online Passes" or whatever incentive program you want to mention.

Necroshea wrote:On one hand, when someone buys a game, the company get's their money regardless. Whatever they do with the game after that should not matter because the company already go their money.

And here's where the disconnect seems to be coming.

The company gets their money for one copy of the game. The store that an individual resells their copy to gets the money to cover their cost of buying from the distributor--and then gets to sell the game again, in many cases for a few dollars less than the retail price.

Necroshea wrote:More so, if a company does something with a game I don't like, all it takes is a single modder to crack it and fix the issues for me, which happens pretty often when devs pull one of their stunts.

Yeah, how dare those devs put in methods to ensure their work isn't fiddled with or reproduced in full and distributed for free.

Kanluwen wrote:
And here's where the disconnect seems to be coming.

The company gets their money for one copy of the game. The store that an individual resells their copy to gets the money to cover their cost of buying from the distributor--and then gets to sell the game again, in many cases for a few dollars less than the retail price.

If you're referring to the company missing on someone else buying the game for retail instead of used, netting them profit when the other gives the third party profit, I already addressed that.

Kanluwen wrote:Yeah, how dare those devs put in methods to ensure their work isn't fiddled with or reproduced in full and distributed for free.

DRM hurts legit customers more than it does the pirates. I'm the idiot that paid money to get assassins creed brotherhood, and I have to stay online with it while I only play single player. The pirate on the other hand gets the game free AND has a cracked server meaning he can play offline all day long.

While us upstanding customers have to eat the crap DRM they dump on us, pirates usually don't have to mess with any of it. So yes, how dare they.

I seriously hope this catches on with other game devs' and gamestop gets a good punch in the groin, I'm sick of them.....

chaos0xomega wrote:I've heard you argue this before, and its as flawed an argument now as it was then. While it doesn't 'cost anything extra', it still requires the maintenance cost to upkeep the servers, pay the tech support crew, and to pay the developers to patch the game. That cost doesn't change. The money used to pay these people and maintain/upgrade these systems so that you can utilize and play the game, as well as so that the developer can continue to pay people to develop NEW GAMES, COMES FROM PURCHASING NEW COPIES OF THE GAME. By purchasing a used copy of the game, you are essentially piggy backing in off of someone else, for all intents and purposes, you are a parasite, taking what you want without giving anything back to the system and its associated workplace economy. While you aren't adding any extra load to the servers or anything, you are accelerating the degradation of the system by denying the developer an additional revenue stream which is used to maintain it and improve it.

Again, I'm going to point to pretty much every other industry which has a second hand market - books, cars etc... just like the games industry they seem to cope quite well with large 2nd hand markets. Car companies still try to attract people to their garages to either buy 2nd hand or service their car, buy spares etc (DLC) and can make quite a good return - after all they have already sold the car new, may have sold it 2nd hand again, and are making money hand over fist by servicing the car over the years. I've yet to hear of a car company going bust because people buy used cars, or a publisher going under because of car boot sales or even national 2nd hand chains.

Would they all make more money if people only bought new? Possibly - it is not a guarantee that people will always buy new; take a look at pirated movies, games and films. I recall an "on the street" survey which asked a few hundred people how much they would pay for the tracks on their MP3 players. The vast majority of people said they wouldn't, even if they had 1,000's of songs on there. Even back in the days before computers and the internet, bootleg tapes and records were still being said.

So really, what you are saying is "computer games companies are going to go bust because people will sell their games on thus extending the lifetime of the games they produce without giving any money to the games companies" - OK; please show me a company that will be stupid enough to pay the running costs of servers for games that are no longer making them money? Or release patches? As was mentioned before - Chromehounds shut down their servers when the return they were getting made the game no longer viable for support (which was a shame as I went to try and play it the other day only to find that I can't ).

Games companies are wanting to get a slice of the 2nd hand pie without having to have the expense of owning and running physical chains of shops - they want their money for "free".

Don't get me wrong - I understand development costs and maintenance costs for products. But I also understand supply, demand and cost thresholds. Games companies are creating demand but are not supplying at a cost threshold that most people are happy paying. To put it another way, do you see a product and buy it straight from the manufacturer at whatever price they are selling it for, or do you shop around for the cheapest price (given other ease factors)? There is a reason price fixing is illegal - it encourages competition and helps prevent people holding you hostage for their products.

As for other DLC, such as map packs, etc. what percentage of games purchasers ever actually pay for most of that stuff? I know I very rarely do, ditto most of my friends. I would say that its a very limited source for additional revenue for the developers, might be enough to cover some functions, but it won't make up for all the lost sales resulting from a used game.

Anecdotal evidence is not evidence

Sales of DLC are obviously worthwhile or companies would not put it out.

You clearly seem to be interested (otherwise why are you arguing about it so much?) in acquiring this extra content offered as a reward to people who support the company... yet you refuse to do so and shell out some extra cash. It seems kinda odd to me. BTW, the cost of a new video game is actually less now than it was years ago. Video game price points have been and continue to be well below the rate of inflation. An atari game or whathaveyou from way back when costs approx. 120 USD in today's terms, while a PS1 era game would be approx 90 USD in todays terms IIRC. While the actual dollar amount might seem higher, you have to take into consideration the actual worth of a dollar as well.

I'm not complaining about companies releasing extra content, even extra content that is only available for new copies or pre-orders that is in essence extra "bling" - I'm complaining about companies chopping out big parts of the actual game and then selling it back to you.

I also find it odd that you complain that the developers want another slice of the pie (more like they want a slice of the pie that was stolen from them, which is perfectly understandable)

My car was 2nd hand, bough, paid for, licensed, taxed, insured with all the proper paperwork. The thought that I somehow stole it from the company that manufactured it is more or less as ridiculous as the thought that the game I play having bought it second hand is stolen from the company that made it because I did not buy it direct from them.

and not of the used game retailers that are making a killing off the practice.

I would please like you to find anywhere in anything that I have said that would indicate that I believe this way. Indeed I have stated a number of times that while the 2nd hand gaming sales generate a lot of money, 2nd hand game stores are out there with expenses, staff and physical presence on highstreets, the same as any other store, providing a service which, as I have said, is apparently in quite high demand given the value of 2nd hand sales. They are earning their money in the same way as any other store - buying cheap, selling high, supplying demand. There is absolutely nothing stopping games companies from starting up their own 2nd hand trade. But that would require extra expense, extra effort and wouldn't just let them sit back and make people pay for online codes to get their games working properly.

The average amount of money I receive from trading in a used game is less than 10 dollars, unless its a new game that came out earlier that week in which case its usually less than 20, and that is in store credit... so I am then forced to either provide them with more of my money if I don't have enough for another purchase, or I purchase another game from them using the credit I have, in which case I effectively traded 5 to 10 games (depending, in some case more than that) for 1. Gamestop will then resell that game (or those games) for several times the price they paid for it. You don't think Gamestop wants too large a slice of pie for giving me 7 USD for a game and then selling it the next day for 34.99? Perhaps I would agree with you if those numbers were a little more balanced, but they on average resell for 400% profit.

I've traded in a few games in my time (not many as I usually hang on to them); you usually get, in my experience, 2 prices, one for cash, one for store credit (with the former being less than the latter). Obviously this will vary from store to store but I've never heard of stores not offering a cash price. I think that is an issue with your 2nd hand chains rather than the 2nd hand market.

Again, you seem to be putting words into my mouth - I'm not talking about the moral rights and wrongs of 2nd hand gaming stores; simply that games companies are wanting to make money from a market that they have not invested in.

Besides, the way I see it, the practice of rewarding people who purchase a new copy of a game is way better than the practices that CAPCOM and certain other companies have engaged in, whereby they rerelease the game approx 1 year later with more content (usually extra characters/weapons, etc.), but they don't offer that content as DLC to the people who purchased the original game at all, forcing them to purchase it again if they want to have a fully enabled game.

There are many ways to continue making money from games (new and used); I just don't believe having to pay for core content is the way forward.

Kanluwen wrote:
Find me an XBL game that has had its DLC removed.

No, seriously. I'd love to see some proof of your statement about "Microsoft taking items down if they need space and/or it hasn't sold for a while".

Part of the issue with responding to this is that no one can do it yet, as the game manufacturers are just now implementing this. For this conversation to have a point, we'd really have to revisit it 10 years from now, and see that either, this 'doomsday scenario' happens, or the sky isn't falling after all.

And Microsoft isn't above turning off services that it deems unnecessary anymore. See their MSN Music service and Original XBox Live. Not the same as this specific situation, but a service is a service, right? Missing a part of your game because you're trying to play it 10 years later sucks.

I think that this topic has nearly exhausted itself for me though. I'm going to go daydream about being able to play Hellgate: London with friends again.

Kanluwen wrote:Of what? Them doing nothing that isn't already in existence?

Seriously. This is no different than "Battle Codes" or "Online Passes" or whatever incentive program you want to mention.

And once again; what happens five/ten/twenty years down the line?

If you have to pay to play online in a mostly single player game, that's one thing; eventually the games servers will be cut off, and you wouldn't have to worry about it that far down the line. But once you start cutting off content, that makes it alot harder to justify trying to play it down the line.

Slarg232 wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:Of what? Them doing nothing that isn't already in existence?

Seriously. This is no different than "Battle Codes" or "Online Passes" or whatever incentive program you want to mention.

And once again; what happens five/ten/twenty years down the line?

A new console is introduced and your point is irrelevant in either case?

If you have to pay to play online in a mostly single player game, that's one thing; eventually the games servers will be cut off, and you wouldn't have to worry about it that far down the line. But once you start cutting off content, that makes it alot harder to justify trying to play it down the line.

Once again.

You are not cutting off content to anyone who is buying the game in a manner that supports the developers(i.e. buying it new). You are cutting off content to the people who are buying the game from a company that buys up the games secondhand, and pockets the profit themselves. These companies are not supporting the developers, they are doing nothing at all to encourage the growth of these game developers. If they were to start being required by law to return a portion of what they get from preowned sales to the developers--be under no illusions, they'd throw hissyfits and pull the preowned service.

Daedalus wrote:Part of the issue with responding to this is that no one can do it yet, as the game manufacturers are just now implementing this. For this conversation to have a point, we'd really have to revisit it 10 years from now, and see that either, this 'doomsday scenario' happens, or the sky isn't falling after all.

It's been implemented since Dragon Age: Origins, at the very least. The problem with responding to this is that people are seeing these announcements and not framing them properly in their heads. They view it all as an attack upon the customerbase, when in reality it's being done to screw over the spankers who own chains like EB/GameStop.

And Microsoft isn't above turning off services that it deems unnecessary anymore. See their MSN Music service and Original XBox Live. Not the same as this specific situation, but a service is a service, right? Missing a part of your game because you're trying to play it 10 years later sucks.

So your argument is that ten years later, you should still be considered a customer even if it's a free service?

SilverMK2 wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:I've heard you argue this before, and its as flawed an argument now as it was then. While it doesn't 'cost anything extra', it still requires the maintenance cost to upkeep the servers, pay the tech support crew, and to pay the developers to patch the game. That cost doesn't change. The money used to pay these people and maintain/upgrade these systems so that you can utilize and play the game, as well as so that the developer can continue to pay people to develop NEW GAMES, COMES FROM PURCHASING NEW COPIES OF THE GAME. By purchasing a used copy of the game, you are essentially piggy backing in off of someone else, for all intents and purposes, you are a parasite, taking what you want without giving anything back to the system and its associated workplace economy. While you aren't adding any extra load to the servers or anything, you are accelerating the degradation of the system by denying the developer an additional revenue stream which is used to maintain it and improve it.

Again, I'm going to point to pretty much every other industry which has a second hand market - books, cars etc... just like the games industry they seem to cope quite well with large 2nd hand markets. Car companies still try to attract people to their garages to either buy 2nd hand or service their car, buy spares etc (DLC) and can make quite a good return - after all they have already sold the car new, may have sold it 2nd hand again, and are making money hand over fist by servicing the car over the years. I've yet to hear of a car company going bust because people buy used cars, or a publisher going under because of car boot sales or even national 2nd hand chains.

If you buy a used car, you buy it knowing that it will not be as good as if you bought it new, it will be older, and more likely to break down, and a thousand other reasons.

If you buy a used book, you buy it knowing that it will not be as good as if you bought it new, it will be used, and likely slightly dog-eared and worn.

If you buy a used game, you buy it knowing that it will be EXACTLY as good as if you bought it new, the entire game will be there, and so there is no difference to buying the game new, apart from price.

If you want to buy a book or a car, you know that, if used, it will not be in as good a condition as a brand new item, this encourages you to buy one for the full retail price, as you are getting a superior product.
If you want to buy a game, you know that, if used, the only difference to a brand new product will be that the manual may be slightly worn, there is virtually no encouragement to buy a copy for full retail price, as you are getting exactly the same product for less money.

The only way for developers and publishers to ensure that the used game industry more accurately parralels the used car and book industries is to ensure that people that pay the full retail price get a superior product, be that in the form of one-time use DLC, or locking out features if you do not enter a one use code.

Kanluwen wrote:

Daedalus wrote:Part of the issue with responding to this is that no one can do it yet, as the game manufacturers are just now implementing this. For this conversation to have a point, we'd really have to revisit it 10 years from now, and see that either, this 'doomsday scenario' happens, or the sky isn't falling after all.

It's been implemented since Dragon Age: Origins, at the very least. The problem with responding to this is that people are seeing these announcements and not framing them properly in their heads. They view it all as an attack upon the customerbase, when in reality it's being done to screw over the spankers who own chains like EB/GameStop.

I didn't play Dragon Age, so I wouldn't know. My problem is this: I'm the client. I don't give a gak about their second-hand game wars. Solve it through legislation. Don't solve your non-technical problems through technical means. At the end of the day, I want a functional product that just works, and I don't want it to ARTIFICIALLY diminish, be it over time, or be it because a friend is done with it and gave it to me. I expect a car to diminish over time. I don't expect a (well taken care of) book to diminish over time. Same thing with movies. Same things with games.

And Microsoft isn't above turning off services that it deems unnecessary anymore. See their MSN Music service and Original XBox Live. Not the same as this specific situation, but a service is a service, right? Missing a part of your game because you're trying to play it 10 years later sucks.

So your argument is that ten years later, you should still be considered a customer even if it's a free service?

I do not believe that MSN Music was a free service. Multiplayer in games, in the case of XBox live, is something I consider a function of the game. I'm the client. I don't care that it's a service that Microsoft offers. It's a console. I see the back of the game box says it offers multiplayer, and so then I get it. If the ability to play it with others goes away after that, be it a year later, five years later, or ten years later, then the product that is offered is unfit for it's purpose.

Here is my counter to your argument: How often must you buy something from a company before you're considered a customer? Is the company being philanthropic to offer such service 'free'?

daedalus wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:

Daedalus wrote:Part of the issue with responding to this is that no one can do it yet, as the game manufacturers are just now implementing this. For this conversation to have a point, we'd really have to revisit it 10 years from now, and see that either, this 'doomsday scenario' happens, or the sky isn't falling after all.

It's been implemented since Dragon Age: Origins, at the very least. The problem with responding to this is that people are seeing these announcements and not framing them properly in their heads. They view it all as an attack upon the customerbase, when in reality it's being done to screw over the spankers who own chains like EB/GameStop.

I didn't play Dragon Age, so I wouldn't know. My problem is this: I'm the client. I don't give a gak about their second-hand game wars. Solve it through legislation. Don't solve your non-technical problems through technical means.

But here's the rub. It can be solved through technical means. Legislation probably would not accept this as an issue, since they'd rather just ban video games or whatever thrill of the week is going on.

At the end of the day, I want a functional product that just works, and I don't want it to ARTIFICIALLY diminish, be it over time, or be it because a friend is done with it and gave it to me. I expect a car to diminish over time. I don't expect a (well taken care of) book to diminish over time. Same thing with movies. Same things with games.

A well-taken care of book will diminish over time. A well-cared for movie will as well, through simple usage.

If a friend "is done with it and gave it to you"--you're not a customer of the developer. If your friend gives it to you, and knows that you'd need a code or something of that nature--he's a jerk.

And Microsoft isn't above turning off services that it deems unnecessary anymore. See their MSN Music service and Original XBox Live. Not the same as this specific situation, but a service is a service, right? Missing a part of your game because you're trying to play it 10 years later sucks.

So your argument is that ten years later, you should still be considered a customer even if it's a free service?

I do not believe that MSN Music was a free service. Multiplayer in games, in the case of XBox live, is something I consider a function of the game. I'm the client. I don't care that it's a service that Microsoft offers. It's a console. I see the back of the game box says it offers multiplayer, and so then I get it. If the ability to play it with others goes away after that, be it a year later, five years later, or ten years later, then the product that is offered is unfit for it's purpose.

Goliath wrote:
If you buy a used game, you buy it knowing that it will be EXACTLY as good as if you bought it new, the entire game will be there, and so there is no difference to buying the game new, apart from price.

Not necessarily. The beautiful full color manual and cloth map packaged with the game could be missing or damaged. Furthermore the game disc itself could be scratched to hell and only read every fourth time.

That's the analogue to the book's pages being dog-eared. What's going on here is Chapter 7 of the book disappears when the book changes hands.

daedalus wrote:

Goliath wrote:
If you buy a used game, you buy it knowing that it will be EXACTLY as good as if you bought it new, the entire game will be there, and so there is no difference to buying the game new, apart from price.

Not necessarily. The beautiful full color manual and cloth map packaged with the game could be missing or damaged. Furthermore the game disc itself could be scratched to hell and only read every fourth time.

That's the analogue to the book's pages being dog-eared. What's going on here is Chapter 7 of the book disappears when the book changes hands.

So I think we can now safely assume you have no clue what you're talking about.

The "analogue to the book's pages being dog-eared" is "the game disc could be scratched to hell and only read every fourth time"?

Oh, as a fun fact: places like GameStop will sell those scratched to hell discs to you at the price they set. If they don't work, you're SOL as they won't replace it.

Kanluwen wrote:
Your idea of "I should be able to continue playing it five or ten years later" is ridiculous. How many software products do you have that you can actually use after 5-10 years without having to run emulators?

I can natively play Deus Ex (the original) on my Windows 7 PC. I'm sure I could come up with others, but that's the one I chose as I was doing that just the other day. The original Diablo seems to work also, though it's dependent on finding an IPX wrapper for Win 7 if you want to play on the LAN. While that's annoying, there's a 'fix' for it.

Kanluwen wrote:

Here is my counter to your argument: How often must you buy something from a company before you're considered a customer?

What kind of stupid counter is this?

Apparently one so stupid you can't actually answer it, so I will try to elaborate as to what exactly I mean. You question whether you should be considered a customer ten years later. I'm sidestepping the 'free service' bit, because its not a free service, it's built into the cost of the game license/console, otherwise, they're doing it wrong. I don't honestly know how long someone should be considered a customer. I was inquiring as to what was reasonable. If you're NOT still a customer after ten years, are you one after five years? Are you a customer six months later? When do you stop being a customer, and need to buy something else to become one once again?



Automatically Appended Next Post:

Kanluwen wrote:
So I think we can now safely assume you have no clue what you're talking about.

It took you this long? I figured you'd dismissively written off any opinion other than yours as absurd before you first entered the thread. How about this one. I buy games. I buy them new. That makes me a 'customer'. No matter how much of a clue what I'm talking about, if I still don't like this, am I not just as entitled to my opinion as the next guy?

The "analogue to the book's pages being dog-eared" is "the game disc could be scratched to hell and only read every fourth time"?

Yup. "some physical damage but otherwise doesn't usually prevent accessing the content" is "some physical damage but otherwise doesn't usually prevent accessing the content". It's not a perfect analogy, I know, but I've never seen one that was. At any rate, it's a better analogy than calling content disappearing equivalent to "oh, it's just the pages dog-eared a little."

Oh, as a fun fact: places like GameStop will sell those scratched to hell discs to you at the price they set. If they don't work, you're SOL as they won't replace it.

I'm sure they will. There's a special place in Hell for those who dictate the practices and policies of GameStop and their ilk. I never once tried to argue that.

daedalus wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:
Your idea of "I should be able to continue playing it five or ten years later" is ridiculous. How many software products do you have that you can actually use after 5-10 years without having to run emulators?

I can natively play Deus Ex (the original) on my Windows 7 PC. I'm sure I could come up with others, but that's the one I chose as I was doing that just the other day. The original Diablo seems to work also, though it's dependent on finding an IPX wrapper for Win 7 if you want to play on the LAN. While that's annoying, there's a 'fix' for it.

Those are PC games, so not reliant on an ever changing format. Console games largely depend on you have a working console that runs the game. I'd like to play Pokemon Red, but I'll need an appropriate console. Whereas if I want to play Age of Empires, it still works on my PC, regardless of operating system.

Kanluwen wrote:
Here is my counter to your argument: How often must you buy something from a company before you're considered a customer?

What kind of stupid counter is this?

Apparently one so stupid you can't actually answer it, so I will try to elaborate as to what exactly I mean. You question whether you should be considered a customer ten years later. I'm sidestepping the 'free service' bit, because its not a free service, it's built into the cost of the game license/console, otherwise, they're doing it wrong. I don't honestly know how long someone should be considered a customer. I was inquiring as to what was reasonable. If you're NOT still a customer after ten years, are you one after five years? Are you a customer six months later? When do you stop being a customer, and need to buy something else to become one once again?

You stop being a customer the moment you trade in your original copy that you bought brand new, to Gamestop, or you're never one if you buy it pre-owned first time.

Kanluwen wrote:
So I think we can now safely assume you have no clue what you're talking about.

It took you this long? I figured you'd dismissively written off any opinion other than yours as absurd before you first entered the thread. How about this one. I buy games. I buy them new. That makes me a 'customer'. No matter how much of a clue what I'm talking about, if I still don't like this, am I not just as entitled to my opinion as the next guy?

You have as much right as anyone, but that doesn't make what you think any less wrong to people that think differently.

The "analogue to the book's pages being dog-eared" is "the game disc could be scratched to hell and only read every fourth time"?

Yup. "some physical damage but otherwise doesn't usually prevent accessing the content" is "some physical damage but otherwise doesn't usually prevent accessing the content". It's not a perfect analogy, I know, but I've never seen one that was. At any rate, it's a better analogy than calling content disappearing equivalent to "oh, it's just the pages dog-eared a little."

There's not a huge used book market. If people buy books, they read and then keep them for years on end, because you aren't getting very much at all when you trade them in. Compare that to games, that you can buy new for 40 pounds, give back to Gamestop for 25, who then sell it on for 35.

Oh, as a fun fact: places like GameStop will sell those scratched to hell discs to you at the price they set. If they don't work, you're SOL as they won't replace it.

I'm sure they will. There's a special place in Hell for those who dictate the practices and policies of GameStop and their ilk. I never once tried to argue that.

Agreed. The condition of the games I've seen being traded in are just stupid. Although, the big store here for pre-owned, which is Gamestation, checks each and every disk before they accept them. At least then you can be almost sure it works out of the box. Controllers though, they don't pay you for them, but they sell on pre-owned ones for stupid money,

Go ahead and try to play XCOM on your Win7 PC and tell me how well that works out for you.

iproxtaco, you could be playing Pokemon red within 15 minutes if you really wanted to. Simply go download the ROM and emulator. There ya go, you're playing it on your PC.

As for there not being a big used books market, have you ever been to Amazon.com?

iproxtaco wrote:

daedalus wrote:
I can natively play Deus Ex (the original) on my Windows 7 PC. I'm sure I could come up with others, but that's the one I chose as I was doing that just the other day. The original Diablo seems to work also, though it's dependent on finding an IPX wrapper for Win 7 if you want to play on the LAN. While that's annoying, there's a 'fix' for it.

Those are PC games, so not reliant on an ever changing format. Console games largely depend on you have a working console that runs the game. I'd like to play Pokemon Red, but I'll need an appropriate console. Whereas if I want to play Age of Empires, it still works on my PC, regardless of operating system.

Oh, yeah, in that case, 100% of all the games I personally own on consoles still work 100% without emulation at 100% functionality. I'm not sure that was the point Kan was trying to make though.

Apparently one so stupid you can't actually answer it, so I will try to elaborate as to what exactly I mean. You question whether you should be considered a customer ten years later. I'm sidestepping the 'free service' bit, because its not a free service, it's built into the cost of the game license/console, otherwise, they're doing it wrong. I don't honestly know how long someone should be considered a customer. I was inquiring as to what was reasonable. If you're NOT still a customer after ten years, are you one after five years? Are you a customer six months later? When do you stop being a customer, and need to buy something else to become one once again?

You stop being a customer the moment you trade in your original copy that you bought brand new, to Gamestop, or you're never one if you buy it pre-owned first time.

Okay, so my completely-in-the-future-hypothetical-hand-picked situation: I own the game. Whatever game that employs this business model. I bought it new and legitimately, x number of years ago. Y number of years ago, the company that produces "the game" stopped offering the ability to unlock this feature. Maybe the company went under, maybe the service died. Doesn't matter. I finally dust off my X-Station 720 to play it for a while. I find that my hard drive/memory stick/whatever is fried that contains the magic beans that make the little sewer hatches open. I then manage to replace/reformat/repair said drive, at the cost of the data on it. As I start to play, remembering that section of the game fondly as one of the cooler ones, my experience is diminished, as it's now inaccessible. As the customer and original owner of the product, do I not still have a 'right' to have that experience back? If not, why? How is it 'right' that this has been removed from the content because I decided to play it years later than the developer accounted for, and had to replace my system because hard drives are relatively short lived?

Maybe I'm an outlier, but yes, I do the above quite frequently. Once every few years, I go back to Fallout, the Ultima games, Planescape: Torment, even Starcraft. That's not including my oldschool console games. Sometimes games even older and more obscure. All news about things like this does is make me not want to buy the games that employ such schemes, period.

Yup. "some physical damage but otherwise doesn't usually prevent accessing the content" is "some physical damage but otherwise doesn't usually prevent accessing the content". It's not a perfect analogy, I know, but I've never seen one that was. At any rate, it's a better analogy than calling content disappearing equivalent to "oh, it's just the pages dog-eared a little."

There's not a huge used book market. If people buy books, they read and then keep them for years on end, because you aren't getting very much at all when you trade them in. Compare that to games, that you can buy new for 40 pounds, give back to Gamestop for 25, who then sell it on for 35.

Amazon is a fairly successful used book venue, and I think a good many people purchase used books from it quite often.

Again, I'm not saying that the game companies SHOULDN'T protect their interests. I'm not saying I can even as much as tolerate GameStop. I'm just saying there's gotta be a better way. And as far as this not effecting the companies, I'm not buying a game that I can't play as long as I have the physical media. Steam is something I was uncomfortable with for a long time, but I've come to terms with it because there's simple enough ways to backup/export your games. Steam is also a largely used enough service that I hope they would have the decency to release some means of 'unlocking' their games from the service, should they ever go under.

So once again, your example relies upon the game system in question going under and obsolescence being intolerable.

Do you realize how ridiculous of a stance that is, Daedalus?
It's like saying that Ford should service your Model T, because hey they made it originally right?

nectarprime wrote:Go ahead and try to play XCOM on your Win7 PC and tell me how well that works out for you.

Original XCOM? Yeah, probably wouldn't work. In that case, I'd try to DosBox it, but this is not really a question of hardware/OS incompatibility anyway, it's a question of a 'walled garden' being created because an activation service doesn't exist anymore. That's not something you can typically just emulate away.

You'd have to get lucky and hope for some sort of (dubiously legal) files found online at some sort of enthusiast's fan site to 'fix' the issue.


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Kanluwen wrote:So once again, your example relies upon the game system in question going under and obsolescence being intolerable.

Do you realize how ridiculous of a stance that is, Daedalus?
It's like saying that Ford should service your Model T, because hey they made it originally right?

If my Model T had to call Ford when I started it so it could decide whether I had the version that could drive a max of 20 mph, or the version that could drive a max of 30 mph, and defaulted to 20 mph if it couldn't reach Ford? Then yes, yes I would.

If it's a standalone product that's completely functional that doesn't need permission to access the 'premium features' that I already paid for, like, for example, a Model T, then no, of course not. That's ridiculous.

My question is how are they able to tell if the game is "used" or not? I mean if I bought it new, my console dies and I replace it, will it still know that I purchased it new or because I have a different console it now thinks its "used"? Basically linking the disc to the console in their system.

daedalus wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:So once again, your example relies upon the game system in question going under and obsolescence being intolerable.

Do you realize how ridiculous of a stance that is, Daedalus?
It's like saying that Ford should service your Model T, because hey they made it originally right?

If my Model T had to call Ford when I started it so it could decide whether I had the version that could drive a max of 20 mph, or the version that could drive a max of 30 mph, and defaulted to 20 mph if it couldn't reach Ford? Then yes, yes I would.

If it's a standalone product that's completely functional that doesn't need permission to access the 'premium features' that I already paid for, like, for example, a Model T, then no, of course not. That's ridiculous.

Here's the problem between our stances I think.
You're lumping two things together that should not be lumped together, unless your intent is purely to confuse the issue.

These 'premium features' are not being held by the developer on the developer's servers. The registration to access these 'premium features' are not being held by the developer on the developer's servers.
They are being held by Sony and Microsoft. Developers publishing on the consoles have access to this method, thanks to the companies who maintain the consoles. The developers have to give a cut to Sony and Microsoft anyways, so why should they not take advantage of this system?

The UMK3 thing that Slarg brought up was a completely different story, in that Midway(the owners of the property) went under and were then bought out. The games were pulled from the Live Arcade for the reason that the property was exchanging hands and MS did not have a deal with the new owners of the property, not because of any kind of obsolescence.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Infreak wrote:My question is how are they able to tell if the game is "used" or not? I mean if I bought it new, my console dies and I replace it, will it still know that I purchased it new or because I have a different console it now thinks its "used"? Basically linking the disc to the console in their system.

The codes are registered to your Live/PSN accounts, not the console. This isn't like CD keys where you had just one and you had to buy multiple copies to use it on multiple PCs.

I'm way behind the times lol

Kanluwen wrote:
Here's the problem between our stances I think.
You're lumping two things together that should not be lumped together, unless your intent is purely to confuse the issue.

These 'premium features' are not being held by the developer on the developer's servers. The registration to access these 'premium features' are not being held by the developer on the developer's servers.
They are being held by Sony and Microsoft. Developers publishing on the consoles have access to this method, thanks to the companies who maintain the consoles. The developers have to give a cut to Sony and Microsoft anyways, so why should they not take advantage of this system?

The UMK3 thing that Slarg brought up was a completely different story, in that Midway(the owners of the property) went under and were then bought out. The games were pulled from the Live Arcade for the reason that the property was exchanging hands and MS did not have a deal with the new owners of the property, not because of any kind of obsolescence.

Though I'm still not a fan of single player content being held hostage through any online service, I do see your point. I suppose times are changing and my expectations surrounding this are somewhat...old-fashioned.

I wonder who would do the hosting for PC versions of the content for RAGE. I guess Id/Bethesda directly? I assume they're not just going to release it only as a Steam/Windows Live game.

I'll just leave this final point here from me:

The developers and producers of video games have no economic incentive to support the used game market. So they will instead support the new games market, which they do have economic incentive to support. No amount of nerdrage will change this. If you want to rage at someone, rage at gamestop for focusing so much on the used game market that the developers are forced to use these kinds of methods to make the amount of money necessary to continue making AAA games.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh, another note:


http://www.spacemarine.com/blog-post/space-marine-elite-pass-details

Space Marine will feature an ‘Elite Pass’ for the Xbox 360 and PS3 platforms. A single-use code will be printed on the back of the manual found in all new copies of the game which unlocks the full multiplayer experience. Players who don’t have the pass will have access to the entire single-player campaign as well as multiplayer modes and maps, but they will not be able to progress past rank 5 or unlock any of the associated upgrades. Users without an Elite pass will be able to purchase one for $10 through the Xbox Live and PlayStation Network stores.


FAQ:

Will multiplayer become locked out once I reach rank 5 without the Elite Pass?

No, players are free to play as much multiplayer as they like without redeeming the pass. Only progression past rank 5 is locked out.

Is customization tied to the Elite Pass?

The customization options will be available to all players. Certain weapons and cosmetic upgrades that are unlocked by leveling up would be unavailable unless the player progressed past Level 5 with an Elite Pass.

Do I need a unique Elite Pass Code for every user on my console?

No. One Elite Pass Code will give full multiplayer access to multiple users logged into the console where the Elite Pass Code was first activated (subject to the console manufacturer’s and THQ’s terms of service).

This is the same system they used for Homefront, I should note, and has no effect on PC gamers because the game is tied to Steam anyway so it's basically impossible to get a used version.

Mr. Self Destruct wrote:Oh look, another reason not to buy something from Bethesda.

This game is not by bethesda...

GalacticDefender wrote:

Mr. Self Destruct wrote:Oh look, another reason not to buy something from Bethesda.

This game is not by bethesda...

Bethesda is the publisher. Usually its the publisher who makes this kind of call when it comes to releasing games.

On one hand I can see why devs want to make players buy new games but on the other I can also see why people buy used.

Lets take game A:
Game A bought new with no added extras.
Game A bought used, may have minor damage but still useable.

Easily most would go for used, its the same game but cheaper.

So lets look at Game B:
Game B bought new comes with new skins for characters and other aesthetic items.
Game B bought used comes without said skins etc.

Most would probly still go for used, as its a case of hey look "I can turn my blue guy pink and give him a fuzzy hat". They would have to make some seriously cool skins/items to make me spend whatever the difference is.

So game C:

Game C bought new allows online play and DLC.
Game C bought used without online and DLC.

The new game would more than likely win here as theres a good chance I want to play online and I want the DLC.

Ill take "big bad" EA as an example here, I purchased ME1 for £5 PC since I couldnt pass up such a cheap game. Played it, loved it however if there was a code to some DLC that i didnt get then fair enough. ME2 came out and I bought it new because I wanted to see the ME franchise flourish(and I did feel a lil guilty over ME1). ME2 came with the Cerberus code which let me download select DLC for free, Awesome!

If devs want me to buy a game new then there better be a justification for it, if a new and used game are exactly the same ill go used everytime. Skins and aesthetic items dont fully interest me either. So items like select DLC is a way for me to get a new game.

So I actually agree with the devs in cutting content to try get users to buy new. Not that it matters now as the majority of my games will now either come from Steam or Amazon. The devs still get a cut of the pie and I get a new game at used game prices so everybody wins!

So some people got mad that Bethesda made a game and if it is bought used(from Gamestop for example) it will be missing some content. However, some people don't see an issue with Gamestop removing content from a new game as long as they get something for it from Gamestop.

Could be an act of revenge and if it is, I really, really enjoy it.

johnscott10 wrote:If devs want me to buy a game new then there better be a justification for it, if a new and used game are exactly the same ill go used everytime.

This is pretty much why they're doing what they're doing.

You want the full game, you buy new. You want a cheap game, you get an incomplete cheap game.

Melissia wrote:

johnscott10 wrote:If devs want me to buy a game new then there better be a justification for it, if a new and used game are exactly the same ill go used everytime.

This is pretty much why they're doing what they're doing.

You want the full game, you buy new. You want a cheap game, you get an incomplete cheap game.

The funny thing is that only 1 of my games was missing content, which funnily enough I never intended on using haha. It was one of THQs games online mode that I couldnt use. But my gf didnt realise that it would be missin that until after she bought it lol.

johnscott10 wrote:

Melissia wrote:

johnscott10 wrote:If devs want me to buy a game new then there better be a justification for it, if a new and used game are exactly the same ill go used everytime.

This is pretty much why they're doing what they're doing.

You want the full game, you buy new. You want a cheap game, you get an incomplete cheap game.

The funny thing is that only 1 of my games was missing content, which funnily enough I never intended on using haha. It was one of THQs games online mode that I couldnt use. But my gf didnt realise that it would be missin that until after she bought it lol.

What Melissia is probably trying to say is that times are changing and this is how developers are going to get people to buy new games versus the used ones for which they get no profit. But when you realize that you save only 10% off of retail price for what could be scratched to hell, missing the case, or even missing the manual it begins to seem not worth it. Add on the fact that there is DLC which you will miss out for buying used and then you will stop buying used. The DLC offered only has to be at least $5.99 to offset the price of a used game that would be $59.99 normally. Developers get to set the prices of their DLC too, and Gamestop can't touch that unless they start throwing in their own money by either dropping the prices of their used games, giving more for used games, or supplying gift cards with used games missing content. Seeing as though they don't reduce the price for "Game of the Year" editions they sell used and are therefor missing the extra content you would get for free if you bought it new, I doubt they would do any of that.

Same goes for buying ME2 used, you don't get the Cerberus Network card which means you miss out on a lot of DLC console-wise.

Guys, if you are getting such gak service from Gamestop, stop using them - if even a tiny proportion of your used game stories about them are true they shouldn't last a second in competitive retail.

A lot of what you are seeming to be saying is that Gamestop is the big bad evil and should go under rather than any comment on why games developers should be able to lock out more or less essential or core content to bought as new copies of the game and force buyers of used copies to buy their access to said core content.

SilverMK2 wrote:Guys, if you are getting such gak service from Gamestop, stop using them - if even a tiny proportion of your used game stories about them are true they shouldn't last a second in competitive retail.

Except for the fact that people don't understand this. I haven't bought from GameStop since 2006. My money is where my mouth is, I only buy games new from Best Buy, Amazon, or Steam.

A lot of what you are seeming to be saying is that Gamestop is the big bad evil and should go under rather than any comment on why games developers should be able to lock out more or less essential or core content to bought as new copies of the game and force buyers of used copies to buy their access to said core content.

GameStop is the big bad evil, and it's why developers are doing this.

This isn't a case of "1+1=3"--the developers are replying directly to a phenomenon that they've noticed. They know people buy many games used from retailers like GameStop, EB Games, etc.

I don't buy used games anymore. In fact, given Gamestop's attitude towards PC gaming (they absolutely LOATHE PC gaming because they can't sell the game used), I rarely ever buy from them, period.

I go into Gamestops occasionally just to see what games are out, and only ever buy from them if they have a game I can't get anywhere else new. It doesn't happen very often and the last title I bought from them was the Metal Slug Anthology for my PSP a couple of years back. I don't mind one of the Gamestops in the area though, the manager and I will chat sometimes about different retail things, but its the only Gamestop I would ever buy anything from. Again, because of the manager. Seriously, the dude had copies of LOTRO shipped from Delaware to Virginia for free which is pretty cool of him to do.


Other than that, I don't touch Gamestop with a 10 foot pole. As far as developers taking out essential content, good on them.

For all the people who are complaining.....


Buy the game legit?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Melissia wrote:I don't buy used games anymore. In fact, given Gamestop's attitude towards PC gaming (they absolutely LOATHE PC gaming because they can't sell the game used), I rarely ever buy from them, period.

Is Gamestop America's version of EB games [Australia] ? Because I know at least over here in Geelong, Victoria, Australia, the EB games guys have a very Escapist [zero punctuation] point of view to PC gamers, usually treating them a little better than the run of the mill console gamers But I think in your case Melissia, its either bad employees being biased, or your exaggerating a little bit. Regardless of employee attitude, Im sure you could still walk in to gamestop, pick up a PC game and pay the $60 or whatever it is in America, and get a smile from the person behind the desk. No reason to stop buying games from there.

EBGames and GameStop are one and the same.
They just name each differently.

It sucks for people like me who rent games :(

Jaon wrote:For all the people who are complaining.....


Buy the game legit?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Melissia wrote:I don't buy used games anymore. In fact, given Gamestop's attitude towards PC gaming (they absolutely LOATHE PC gaming because they can't sell the game used), I rarely ever buy from them, period.

Is Gamestop America's version of EB games [Australia] ? Because I know at least over here in Geelong, Victoria, Australia, the EB games guys have a very Escapist [zero punctuation] point of view to PC gamers, usually treating them a little better than the run of the mill console gamers But I think in your case Melissia, its either bad employees being biased, or your exaggerating a little bit. Regardless of employee attitude, Im sure you could still walk in to gamestop, pick up a PC game and pay the $60 or whatever it is in America, and get a smile from the person behind the desk. No reason to stop buying games from there.

Over here, Gamestop owns EB games. They used to mark new games that they had let employees use as "Used only once" but now they just take them and re-shrink wrap them. Its an overall dishonest policy that makes me avoid most gamestops, and if I do buy a new game from there they tend to be PC games that are older or not on Steam because even the best buy near me doesn't sell many PC games anymore. Their selection is basically WoW or Starcraft 2.