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Game Devs Using One-Time Bonuses to Fight Used Game Sales
ShackNews reports on an emerging trend which sees game publishers offer one-time bonus codes to unlock extra content for certain titles. Rock Band 2, for example, comes with a code which will allow free 20-song download, but is only usable once. NBA Live '09 has functionality to update team rosters on a daily basis, but will only do so for the original owner. "'This information and data is very valuable and it wasn't free for us,' an EA representative explained on Operation Sports. 'T-Mobile is paying for it this year for all users who buy the game new. This is a very expensive tool to use, and if you don't buy it new, then you'll have to pay for this. It isn't greed at all.'"
This is interesting. My first thought for this is that if I've purchased a game second hand, and by some defectivebydesign defect, I can't access the bonus content, I'll get a pirate copy of that content. Surely by buying something second hand, I've paid for the same rights as that bestowed on the previous owner, so would a judge back me?
15 years from now, when people are picking up the "classics" from this generation, they won't get the full experience that people today got because the game may not be being sold new.
I like this analogy better: It's like you buy an album, and you get a free downloadable track that's a super awesome track. You got it because you bought the album new. Somehow, the RIAA comes up with a magic uncrackable un-analog-recordable DRM that means this bonus track never finds its way to torrent sites. Now 15 years later the original album goes out of print, but it's a bit of a "cult classic." People download the CD from torrent sites or iTunes and enjoy it, but nobody at the label ever bothered to put the "super awesome track" in the iTunes version of the album. Well sure, you have all the tracks from the OFFICIAL album tracklist, but that super awesome free track that everybody raved about 15 years ago is lost in time and space, unless somebody at the label decides to confer the priviledge of hearing that track again to you.
Until all game distribution goes digital (and even when it does), I believe some of these little extra bits will get lost. Personally I'd prefer it if the game came with a really nice poster or plastic figure or something in the REGULAR version of the game. Not the $100 "Collector's Edition," I mean the $60 regular shmuck's copy. It's a nice incentive for customers who buy it new (who's going to sell it to a used game store along with the plastic figure?), and it doesn't take away from the game experience if you don't.
If you look at the average anime rack in DVD stores, new releases are packed with toys and art books and soundtracks and all kinds of stuff to convince you to pay $30 for 4 25-minute episodes. That's the way to do it.