Slashdot Mirror
Rent-a-Game
Mwongozi writes: "British broadband users can now rent computer games to see if they are any good before they lay out the cash to buy the full game. This week, BT Openworld revealed details of its Software To Go scheme which lets people rent software by the hour, day or week. This includes games, graphics packages, educational titles and even programs that let you design your garden."
...at least in Columbia, MD. And it was only games. You could actually go in and rent CD-ROM titles just like you would Playstation games. Guess they didn't rent too many because they don't do it any more.
... or the big bad ISDA shut them down :)
Maybe...
:)
[I'm sure some will beg to differ...]
but unless they have a good licensing scheme, you could probably hit "hibernate" in Windows 2000 or never turn off your machine...
Electronic Boutique offers returns on opened packages, for full refunds. They never have a problem with me returning any game, just cause I "don't like it".
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Dammit, I meant to sat the big bad IDSA. Whoops.
Electronics Boutique launched EB1.COM a while ago. It's the same service, availible to broadband users in the US/Canada. This is old news.
--The space between my ears was intentionally left blank--
A few years ago you used to be able to download
a crippled demo of almost any game to test drive it. Now you have to pay $$$ for a game that you might not like?
This isn't a bad idea. Yes, most Linux users will just use a free piece of software but regular Windows users are different.
I've lost count of how many times people have complained to me about crappy software they were stuck with after buying it blind. This could save them some money.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
This looks very similar to the streaming software technology developed by IntoCenter earlier this year. Electronic Boutique has made some interesting titles available through the IntoPlayer. I gave it a try a couple of months ago and it seemed to work quite well - although it only works on Windows 95/98/Me. The other odd thing is that it installs a SCSI controller into your hardware configuration; I suppose that is how they create an encrypted file system.
Personally, I think this concept is great - there's nothing I hate more than spending $60+ on a game and finding out that it sucks. However, I wonder how long it will be before someone cracks the encryption?
"It is a mathematical fact that the casting of this pebble from my hand alters the centre of gravity of the universe."
When I was a kid, there was a store in my small town that did the same thing for the old floppy-based games. I would rent the old Sierra titles and just copy them. Heh. Dummies.
--
tgm
About 6 years ago, here in Edmonton, Alberta there was this place you could rent computer games. The name of the place started with Circus(?) or something. Anyway, they charged $8 per 2 days. I don't know what ever happened to them, probaby got shut down.
"British broadband users can now rent computer games to see if they are any good before they lay out the cash to buy the full game."
/. article, nor in the original article.
;)
then
"The scheme is open to any broadband net user, not just those that have signed up with BT Openworld."
So which is it? British-only, or any net user?
I don't see any links to the signup/info page in the
Personally, I'm not terribly excited about this anyway. Pay more money so that I can check out a game I may want to purchase anyway? I'd rather just wait for a review from a trusted source or a friend.
Have you seen that site?
Check out "buffer times" for a wonderful joke. It lists "expected start times in minutes" vs your rated connection. Got 1.2 Mbps download? Start time on Thief 2 is 55 minutes! Only have 256 Kbps -- hour about 4+ hours!
Nice idea, but if the implementation isn't better than that, they will never fly.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Of course it flopped because the crackers in those days were light years ahead of the Nero+CDR drive "crackers" of today.
This might be moderately successful on a local level - but for the majority of the world of computer users who don't have broadband it's largely redundant. And plenty of folks have broadband connections at work to forward all those useless 5MB email MPEGs and such with SirCAM, but they are unlikely to be able to justify GAMES with the connections.
Acting stupid isn't much fun when there's someone around who knows better
Have to pay a fee to rent the content, content expires after a certian amount of time...
Some company (MS, DIVX, BT Openworld, etc.) launches their rental product.
Some 16-year old somewhere in the world, who realizes that if the code can execute on the user's box, the user can save a copy, finds a way to crack the piracy protection and uploads the crack to his favorite FTP site
A bunch of freeloaders all over the U.S. start using the crack and getting the software for free
The company gets pissed off and uses the DMCA to squelch distribution of the crack's source code
The users get pissed off and distribute the code even more
Some hard-ass conservative judge decides that the best way to stop the piracy is to butcher the First Amendment
And now, source code is no longer considered protected speech
It's not the vendors' fault for deploying these schemes, but the damage to our civil liberties that inevitably results is immense.
-all dead homiez
This has been available to Danes since july I think. GamesOnDemand is the name, and it is run by a Danish ISP.
Maybe
Oh yeah... Gun, Foot, Aim, Fire!
Ali -=[ http://www.ali-d.abel.co.uk ]=-
There are fewer games but it seems cheaper: a game for 7 days for 50 kroner (about 4 UKP), 12 games for 30 days (they select the games) 150 kroner (12 UKP) and 5 games for 7 days for 100 kroner.
All games can be downloaded (they claim to use some sort of streaming technology so they are downloaded on demand rather than everything at once). If you are a CC ADSL customer, you can also temporarily upgrade your bandwidth for a price to speed up the download :)
Ok, /. was freaking out for about 4 hours. I'd expect a post here shortly about what just happened....
I find it hard to believe that people would not be able to keep the games they download, without modifications to the original game; however, I will not completely discount the idea. Also, being a 56k luser I couldn't help but notice that it takes a broadband connection.
The two things that really concerns me about this, is first, this would be an ideal place for a virus to spread. With high-speed users connecting to the server to download and run games, the whole system invites disaster.
Secondly, (as I see it) what is to keep this company from invading your privacy or compromising your system to the outside world? Anything that is dealing with licenses, registry values, and such is surely advance enough to return to the server what is in those files.
=================
Unix is very user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are.
Yeah, I hear that you can .. um .. rent software before you buy it on usenet, although, you are renting the software for free.
it's a sig, wtf?
I can see it now....
"I can Crack that game in 3 notes...."
"CRACK That Game!!"
haha
You keep going until you die..."Me".
its going to happen, no matter what. this idea is going to be turned into a source for warez.
i cant seem to come up with a sig.
Personally, I like to be able to play a game for as long as I like, without having to worry that my time is about to expire or that I'll be charged more for 'just another hour on Quake 4, I swear...".
Still, a number of micropayments instead of one lump sum could be an interesting software strategy in the future, and I think a lot of people would like to see how they turn out.
(not that you'll see my comment anyway, nobody wants to mod up the posts that start at zero score... *sniffle*)
jd
I did a focus group on this kind of service for MediaOne a couple of years ago (before their AT&Tization). Come to think of it, the service is probably still up & around. Not just games, but other software as well.
This is a great idea for the consumers, could be bad for the companies, now they can hype all they want but if it's not up to snuff with the rental crowds then 'pshaw' on that game and on to the next.
---
ps -aux | grep mind
I won't purchase a game unless it has a demo, or the cool-guys at Wizards of the Coast or Comp-USA open one up and let me test drive in their LAN room. Those are the only to places around here (SF Bay area) that I know of that will let me try before buy. Of course the BEST option is to buy with a credit card and then allow VISA to negotiate with the company if it's a DUD.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Red Octane is awesome. They let you rent PSX games for a small fee, with free shipping. When you send back games they send you new ones.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
Not to mention the fact that a good majority of console makers are planning game downloads (if only demos) for next generation machines. Sony and Microsoft can all but ensure this capability, with ethernet and hard drive support (XBox has this out of box). Of course, there were also plans to have a CD-ROM for the SNES, so who knows what will materialize? :)
and they have been for nearly a year now.
http://www.eb1.com
Prevent linux based DDOS's!
http://linux.denialofservice.org/
I don't find it difficult to get on a beta list for games. Blizzard is pretty kewl about putting a lot of people on betas of their up and comming realeases. I am sure other gaming development companies do the same...if they don't they should. This is a great way to test a game and see if it is to your liking.
Just an everyday guy....nothing special
Software rental was made illegal in the US under the "Software Rental Amendments Act of 1990" ... [which] is still on the books.
The citation is 17 USC 109(b). Note that section 109(b)(1)(B)(2) makes an explicit exception to allow software designed for video game consoles to be rented, defining video game console as "a limited purpose computer that is designed for playing video games and may be designed for other purposes."
This may have an adverse effect on rental for PlayStation 2 software, as Sony markets the PS2 console as a computer to get around several countries' import duties and other taxes. For instance, the Japanese PS2 can run a simple GNU/Linux system, and the European PS2 has a Basic interpreter. It could very well be the case that Sony has not released the PS2 Linux kit in the United States because it doesn't want the extra paperwork burden of licensing rental rights to all the game rental stores.
Will I retire or break 10K?
i keep reading these posts about in this thread about other companies that have done this but nobody knows what happened to those companines, except that maybe they got shut down. I know there is a place here in my hometown thats been doing this now for about the last 4-6 years and they are making quite a profit on it. However, they are not stupid... they will not rent programs or games that are on the top ten list. Only older programs/games or newer ones after the slip a few places on the charts.
They stopped renting video games here in Washington State about 10 years ago due to legal pressures. Seems SPA didnt like people renting new games, and it also broke some licensing policies. I think this was the same issue as Renting Music CD's, and how they closed down stores that sold "Used" Cds.
I couldnt find the law about renting disc based software, but I swear it exists.
IANAL, but honestly, I don't see any real reason to protect code more than, oh, any other system of instruction. Of, if you insist, to treat it any better than simple *action.*
It's not a civil liberty. It's an action--and it should be treated exactly the same. Treating it like "speech" is what demans our civil liberties--not people trying to outsmart software pirates.
Some of the comments make me think that the concept is not understood - this is not like going down to your video store and 'renting' the title for the night and taking home a disk to install - the application is encapsulated in a broadband delivery software environment that manages access, and delivers the software to the user very quickly. And the games are modern, not old 8-bit arcade classics.
Sure, someone out there is going to find a way to crack the encapsulation mechanism, save the game, and distribute it to all his luser mates, but then again, isn't this more secure than simply ripping off the CD-Rom that most games come on now? And when the cost of trying out the game is not much more than the price of a blank disk, you have to be really cheap to still want to rip off the games studios.
I personally thing it is a great idea - in London a new game costs £40, and it's so easy to get stuck with a lemon. This way works out cheaper for people who want to play a lot of different games a few times.
Also, it might not be top of your agenda, but don't forget the environmental angle - digital delivery means less plastic, paper and aluminium ever getting processed for the games.
* Some 16-year old somewhere in the world, who realizes that if the code can execute on the user's box, the user can save a copy
Not necessarily. If the operating system has tight memory protection (Windows XP feature) and requires all kernel-mode components to bear a digital signature by Microsoft Corporation [1] so that you can't run a debugger (XP is headed in that direction), how are you supposed to fetch the 128-bit decryption key?
[1] Not "Microsoft Corporation" fraudists but MS's digital ID.
Some hard-ass conservative judge decides that the best way to stop the piracy is to butcher the First Amendment
Are you predicting that the Supreme Court will have a majority of five "hard-ass" justices by the time they hear a case like this? I can see BSA, RIAA, and MPAA members buying off a district or circuit court judge, but the Supremes have shown a bit more integrity with respect to refusing bribes.
Will I retire or break 10K?
It's their return policy alone that motivates me to buy from them instead of anyone else. Even if a game was $5 more at EB, I'd still buy it from them because of their respect for their customers.
Are there enough broadband users with enough bandwidth in the UK to make this worthwhile? BT's prices for ADSL are shocking... four times what I pay here in Canada for half the speed! I have a friend in Britain considering getting "broadband" from NTL (his cable company), which I find quite amusing as they're only offering 64 kbs... that might be broadband technology, but come on! That's just a bit faster than dialup and only equivalent to a single ISDN channel! I don't think I know anybody in Britain with broadband at home, and I do know quite a few geeky/techie software engineers. Compared with N. America (at least Canada) where I know lots of people with cable or DSL who are down right scared of computers! Besides the later roll-out, I really think broadband is being limited in Britain by costs and especially by the restrictive practises of BT.
Oh man... What do they teach these kids in school these days...
There is an obvious contradiction in your thinking here. "Butchering" the First Amendment would be akin to a revolution. Ergo, it would be an unthinkable act for even the most disgustingly well groomed, most evil "conservative" judge.
To create a revolution by reforming the constitution, you need a revolutionary (doh). See what's happening in Europe under their various Socialist governments, where national constitutions are dismantled. All these Socialists are obviously "hard-ass conservatives", aren't they?
Of course, the fact remain that the US had a certain President Clinton who ruined free speech by signing DMCA into law. He must have been a "hard-ass conservative", huh? :-)
Disclaimer: Where I come from, conservatives are shoving libertarians into Gulags, and Revolutionaries want the equivalent of a First Amendment.
How about removing the filter at the telephone box that limits the amount of wavelength you can use for a modem (see pots).
This idea is the basis for the Digital Subscriber Line technology, commonly known as DSL.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I find they have the cheapest prices 99% of the time (and if they don't, they'll match prices).
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Not necessarily. If the operating system has tight memory protection (Windows XP feature)..., how are you supposed to fetch the 128-bit decryption key?
IMHO (and so far nothing could prove me wrong) no piece of software is uncrackable. So you want to embed protection in the kernel? Big deal, people will simply examine the kernel files and then hack the kernel.
You have no idea how innovative and cunning crackers are. They've been able to crack code which decrypts itself at runtime opcode by opcode. They've even managed to crack dongle-protected applications without having a suitable dongle!
As long as all code and data is accessible, it can be compromised.
In my town there used to be a co-op that you could join for a yearly fee of $50 or so. In exchange, you could buy and sell games and apps all year long at no loss. You could keep the game/app for as long as you liked, and sell it back for the same price whenever you were sick of it.
He! a danish isp (CyberCity) launched that some time ago (as in weeks). It's here in danish
I havent tried it out and probably never will. They actually claim that you dont download the parts you dont play, so it's pretty fast to get. Besides adsl i widely spread here in denmark so it isnt that much of a problem.
I do wonder if they really modify the game so it only downloads the parts that is needed.
still reading?
Why not just download the free demo that most game companies produce? You get to play the first level (or whatever) for free. Then if you like it you go buy the full version.
I live in Oklahoma, and before the big corporate video rental chains moved in we had a unique place called Aardvark Video. I only rented Super Nintendo games there, but for a brief period they rented computer games as well. The only PC game I can remember seeing in the store was Beavis and Butthead related. I didn't have the right platform, but my friends talked about how they could copy minigames to their hard disk and run them individually. This of course, was before CD-R became mainstream.
There was a large, cartoon aardvark painted on the front window.
It looked a lot like Alf .
I think it is now a Mailbox Etc.
Too busy staying alive... ~ R.A.
I bought a psx2 in Frisco, then a month later it quit reading dvds and playstation2 dvd format games. So essentially it became a fast psx. I lost my receipt and they wouldn't make any effort to track down the receipt even though I had my visa transaction number. Months went by arguing with them and Sony and by the time someone actually made an effort at EB, my warranty had expired. So fuck EB. They can kiss my lily-white ass.
Back when i had a Trash-80 and apple, folks were renting games in the san jose.. man that brings back some old school memories..
===sam=== free nessus vulnerability scan = www.vulnerabilities.org
Channelware (now called NetActive) used to rent games through a deal with Blockbuster. They also distributed games inside cereal boxes that you could only play for a limited time. If you liked the game, you could rent the software online to "re-charge" the CD the games came on.
Umm... maybe somebody already posted this, but isn't that what /demos/ are for?
/little/ redundant?
;p.
OK, sure - you might not get the full game experience that you would from fooling around with the full version, so you won't get to see if the gaming quality drops off a couple levels in or something, but that's what sites like Sharky Extreme and FiringSquad are for. Isn't this just a
Then again, publishers are prob'ly in love with this idea. Not just because it's moronic, but cause it helps 'em rake in some more cash charging to rent
-Warble://VX
===== Warble://VX
Disney has been using Into Networks software streaming technology for months now on their site:
http://www.disneyinteractive.com
Click on the left hand window with the "Atlantis" Logo peaking through and then click on the link entitled "Play Atlantis Now."
This is free and gives you a good idea of what this kind of technology can provide to the web.
I have had pretty good experiences with this system. The game buffers some data up front, depending on your bandwidth connection. Doing some arithmetic, I've noticed it doesn't seem to penalize the highspeed user like me (1024Kbps connection) by buffering data that the low end (say 256Kbps) user needs to get good smooth gameplay. At night when more people are using their broadband connection, I seem to get more data buffered so presumably the slower users get smooth gameplay like me, but have to wait longer up front. I'm not sure if BT is using a similar strategy. It would be interesting to see the differences or similarities.
I am a BT broadband user and tested the Software To Go (corny name) service today.
I can confidently announce that it sucks.
Rentable software is usually touted on "ease of use" and cost benefits.
It took 30 minutes for 98M of data to be dumped without permission on my hard disk - estimated BT time was 10mins.
When it finally ran, the application chugged along at about 50% of normal speed with frequent 10 second pauses while the caching caught up. My hard drive sounded like it was going into meltdown!
The application finally gave up the ghost, locked up and seized all of the CPU until I could ungraciously kill it.
The funny thing is, I own the application already and have installed, run and de-installed it on this PC from CD without any problems or loss of performance.
The whole process was so painful that I would advise BT to pull the service and rethink their strategy.
Kids out there are going to find it much more gratifying to spend 30mins downloading full warez versions, rather than going through this tooth-pulling exercise - and having to pay for the privelege.
I'd love to see the fool at BT who bought the pitch from etend.com...poor sucker.
I recently read this very topical article on the popular news and discussion site Adequacy.Org . This article raises a lot of good points, and makes me wonder: what will video games be like in five years? In ten? Does this "Rent-a-Game" craze represent a new step in game evolution, or is it a passing fad that nobody will remember in five years? What are the implications in the growing broadband market? Will it guide the types of games we see in the future? I'm used to reading insightful articles on the popular news and discussion site Adequacy.Org , but the above-linked video game article is a rare gem. I know video games are largely insignificant to the world as a whole, but they represent a microcosm of something much, much larger.
No free demo = no purchase. Nuff said
Big deal, people will simply examine the kernel files and then hack the kernel.
Not if (as I mentioned, and you snipped) the kernel won't boot if it doesn't match the digital signature.
They've even managed to crack dongle-protected applications without having a suitable dongle!
Not worthy of an exclamation point. Most dongle-based apps just call a function that checks for the dongle: if (!find_dongle()) {alert("no dongle"); exit(1);} and the cracker just replaces find_dongle() with {return TRUE;}. However, they have not yet been able to fully crack Capcom Suicide, which does the decryption in a dongle that forgets the key if the voltage to its key RAM is tampered with.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Also, from the article: Exent had broken up the rentable programs into chunks that were streamed to a user's PC when they needed them. The chunks sat in the working memory of the user's machine and were never written to the hard disk, making the software almost impossible to pirate
What's that smell? Is the powerful and obnoxious odour of mendacity? I think it is, because either you'd need a Gb of RAM, or you'd need to wait another 20 minutes for each level to load, and anyway, you could still alt-tab, load something massive, and have the whole lot paged to your hard drive swap.
All that said, I might give this a try and see if it's more convenient than trialling games from Usenet (and yes, I do trial them, and pay for what I want to keep, or just wait six months for the title to go budget).
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Keep checking back. I've heard that the technology is improving and the buffer times are going to come way down very soon.
I tried EB1 in the states, played serious sam and it rocked. The price was reasonable, and unless you are ready to surf through warez sites and deal with all the popups and spyware, this seems like it might be a good way to try out and play lots of games.
i smell an EB1 or Into Networks employee here.... muahaha. the smell of astroturf.