Vital Parts of Games As DLC?

Epic Games president Michael Capps did an interview recently with GamesIndustry, and he had some interesting things to say about the future of downloadable content, and how it will affect the retail games market. He also discussed the trend toward social gaming, and Epic's plans in that regard. Quoting: "I'm not sure how big it is here [in Europe], but the secondary market is a huge issue in the United States. Our primary retailer makes the majority of its money off of secondary sales, and so you're starting to see games taking proactive steps toward that by ... if you buy the retail version you get the unlock code. I've talked to some developers who are saying 'If you want to fight the final boss you go online and pay USD 20, but if you bought the retail version you got it for free.' We don't make any money when someone rents it, and we don't make any money when someone buys it used — way more than twice as many people played Gears than bought it."

Comments

They're insane.

[bigstrat2003]

Do they seriously think their customer base will stand for behavior like that? Anyone who has ever bought a used game will cease to buy any games, new or used, by companies that try to pull this shit. Consumers don't like being raked over the coals.

Re:They're insane.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think this is more of a threat. Games resellers have been making insane profits and leaving the developers and publishers in the cold. It's one thing to sell a book, CD, or yard sale, its another thing entirely to buy recently released top-shelf games at 20 bucks a pop and sell them at 55.

I've got nothing against the first sale doctrine, but those prices? Fuck, at those prices, they should be given a good excuse (We have to give 20% to the developer, or they start killing our business.)

Re:They're insane.

[Iamthecheese]

If a person or entity has a secondhand copy of the game and wants to sell it, thats fair use. If the real market value is higher than $20 for the seller or lower than $50 for the buyer, well no one is stopping you from setting up your own online used game store.

Any tactic like not selling the whole game is, if not a blatent violation of fair use, a dispicable act that will have the manufacturer forever banned from my collection.

Re:They're insane.

[Kohath]

That's just it. The renters and the used game buyers aren't their customers.

Re:They're insane.

[narcberry]

This article got me thinking. We should really shut down sites like Ebay and Craigslist. It's unfair that people are able to sell their assets without generating any profit for the manufacturer.

Re:They're insane.

[Firehed]

Do they seriously think their customer base will stand for behavior like that?

Do you seriously think that it won't happen regardless? The vast majority won't know until it's too late, and that same vast majority are unlikely to look into things before the second purchase to prevent it happening again.

If they want to stop charging $60 for the game, give out the disks for free, and then componentize the gameplay modes as DLC (or rather, unlockable content on the disc), that's reasonable enough. Then I as someone who mostly sticks to single-player campaigns can spend just $15-20 on that rather than dropping $60 for a lot of content that will mostly go unused.

Of course, if they did it that way, it would be fair to us and solve most of their problems - both piracy and second-hand sales. Which guarantees that it will never happen that way.

Re:They're insane.

[Fremandn]

Why not just make games worth keeping?

Re:They're insane.

[bigstrat2003]

Except they are. No one (or at least, very few) rents or buys used games all the time. The average customer likely buys used sometimes, and buys new sometimes. Now they're screwing him over, and he'll never buy from them again. This is stupidity at its finest.

Re:They're insane.

[Anonymous Coward]

From reading the article it seems to me that the largest problem is that the gaming industry are greedy fucking pigs who are taking so much profit from the sales of their games there's not much profit left in them for resellers.

Michael Capps: I'm not sure how big it is here [in Europe], but the secondary market is a huge issue in the United States. Our primary retailer makes the majority of its money off of secondary sales, and so you're starting to see games taking proactive steps toward that by... if you buy the retail version you get the unlock code.

Seems to me that if your primary retailer is making most of its money off of secondary sales that'd be because they're making fuck all on original sales.

Easy for the industry to bitch that they're not making anything off secondary sales but that seems fair to me if the people they rely on to sell their games don't make ends meet from selling new games in the first place.

Re:They're insane.

[Anonymous Coward]

I find it unfair that the games industry gets a free pass on these kinds of things. If the MPAA said the same comment, there'd be protests in the streets!

Re:They're insane.

[dougmc]

They haven't gotten a free pass on anything. Look out in the streets -- they're protesting!

Re:They're insane.

[haystor]

Uh, while that may look like cosplay, before you get dressed up and head outside you might want to check.

Re:They're insane.

[Hal_Porter]

But then we'd have to go outside.

Re:They're insane.

[perlchild]

I think we can safely say that looking at for instance EA, their customer base is composed of sheep, who have no idea how to hurt any of these massive companies. If customers had the intolerance you think they do, EA would have been bankrupt, by 2001 or so.

Re:They're insane.

[Free the Cowards]

When you decide to start punishing non-customers rather than finding ways to entice them into being customers, that's a really bad sign.

Re:They're insane.

[Annymouse Cowherd]

It's one thing to sell a book, CD, or yard sale

Damn, those yard sales are expensive, ever tried to buy one?

Re:They're insane.

[perlchild]

We also got to put people to jail for selling games they can't use to their friends. Yeehaw.

Re:They're insane.

[philspear]

Do they seriously think their customer base will stand for behavior like that?

Yes, since the behavior is pretty clearly bluffing. "I've talked to some developers who are saying..." Yeah, you've talked to developers who were saying "Man, it sucks that we can't get a piece of the pie every time our games are sold, we should do something about it. Also, I really wish I had a unicorn."

You'll notice this is not him saying "In our next game, we're going to do this."

They realize it will directly hurt them eventually. If you couldn't sell a game back if it sucked, a lot of people would be a lot more hesitant to buy a game. I know I would raise my standards for such a game.

Plus, any idiot in the development buisness has to realize this isn't going to amount to beans. If I buy a game like this with a "first buy code" you know what the first thing I'd do would be? Post it online. They could make it such that you had to verify a unique code, but that's hurting their buisness then in another way: people without online capabilities won't be able to play it.

So yeah, if he is serious, he hasn't thought about it for more than 5 minutes.

Re:They're insane.

[CSMatt]

Do you seriously think that they won't? Most people I know who play video games gladly pay their money (hard-earned or otherwise) for either the same damn sports games from EA that have nothing more than a roster update or DLC that will either vanish or otherwise become unplayable in a few years when the servers are finally taken offline. One might think that these people are too fickle to ever want to play these games again in the future, but these same people love the classic titles on consoles that have long been out of production (and are more than willing to pay again for the same titles on DLC). By my observation, either most of the gaming market is too nearsighted to think of how much their investments are going to pay off in the long term or they just don't care. It really makes me glad that I ceased being a customer quite some time ago.

Re:They're insane.

[Fluffeh]

Not much will change.

From my view, now the person who got to rent it for a smaller fee before gets to "rent" it for free. You get the majority of the content there. To me, it just sounds like a glorified Demo, except it's not really a demo, it's the majority of the game. The "demo" part that covers the last bit will be the part you pay for.

I bought Rome a while back. It wasn't a AAA title, but I still paid $69.95Aus for it. That's a reasonably hefty whack of coin, for something that I played three levels of and then thought was rubbish. I would have much preferred to get through three levels of free content then decided the game was shithouse rather than having to learn that at the cost of $70.

Re:They're insane.

[boarder8925]

Don't joke, man! Someone will take this seriously, and it'll be law one day.

Re:They're insane.

[Yvan256]

I did, but then I remembered that I live in an apartment and I wouldn't have anywhere to put that yard.

Re:They're insane.

[retchdog]

Although despicable, it's just as legitimate as our favorite license. If I may quote the GPL:

"EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE PROGRAM `AS IS' WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE."

If the program doesn't come with some levels, or has them disabled, well that's just too bad as long as the implied warranty of merchantability is conspicuously disclaimed. My guess is that it won't be, and that there will be yet another class-action suit.

Re:They're insane.

[fimbulvetr]

The only reason I buy new games is so I can trade them in within 6-12 months and get a good amount back for them. Sometimes gamestop, etc. has a special with their membership + quantity of games that blows anything like the hassle of shipping them to ebay purchasers out of the water. I am willing to pay 50-60 bucks because I know I can re-coup more than half that when I trade them back in. If they start taking that value away, then my new game budget goes down dramatically.

Of course, I generally only buy games getting 8+ or higher on all reviews, which is incredibly helpful for overall worth when trading them back in because most are not shitfests like the latest excuse for a spiderman game.

The remainder of the money I "lost" can be attributed to the premium I paid to get the game close to/on release date, and the fact that companies have to make a profit - which I'm OK with seeing as they wouldn't be investing the amount of effort it takes into getting an 8+ game out the door without the good chance of them making a buck.

Re:They're insane.

[JohnBailey]

Do they seriously think their customer base will stand for behavior like that? Anyone who has ever bought a used game will cease to buy any games, new or used, by companies that try to pull this shit. Consumers don't like being raked over the coals.

About as much as they tolerate games with an install limit or DRM that can not be removed.. It isn't likely to be something that is mentioned on a big brightly coloured sticker on the box, and by the time you have got that far, it is too late. Can't take it back, can't finish the game..

Re:They're insane.

[cheater512]

So....this is them *still* making crap but they are reducing the price a little so they can make more money off said crap.

And if it by some miracle does take off they can go 'Ha!' and slap the full price on it.

Re:They're insane.

[rdnetto]

It's not just the annoyance that will cause a drop in sales - such actions would devalue the retail games since they can't be resold. But I bet the prices are the same...

Re:They're insane.

[ceoyoyo]

That's acceptable for something that's free. Not sure about where you are, but a lot of places have laws against selling things you know are defective.

Re:They're insane.

[GigaplexNZ]

It's time for our favourite car analogy. Car manufacturers don't make a profit when someone sells their car second hand, so why should game developers?

Re:They're insane.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not true at all.

I almost never buy used, I have before, and even if they did start doing that I'd just stop buying used.

You can't speak for all of the population just because YOU dislike something. This isn't the colonial era, consumers put up with a lot and they will put up with even more.

Re:They're insane.

[Destoo]

Because the game still has 'full value' when you re-sell it. The bits have not changed, the game is still the same. The car loses at least a few thousands in value the minute you take it out of the dealer's yard.

This is why they want to add this 'feature'. To make the game lose value on the second sale. Looking at it that way, and seeing third parties making money only by reselling, I can only approve.

Re:They're insane.

[bigman2003]

Good post. Except for the part where you predict this won't happen.

I just bought Gears of War 2 on Friday. It came with codes for me to download maps. These are single use codes.

Now these maps are 'old', but it is a huge amount of content nonetheless.

If I do sell the game, the person who buys it from me will have 9 maps instead of 14.

(Personally, I think this whole idea is great.)

Re:They're insane.

[Miseph]

But it doesn't, and here's how we know... 6 months after most games come out, they cost at least $20 less than they did on their street date, yet copies are still being printed and shipped, and money is still being made.

They can't sell old games at full price, and they've known it for a while, but some shit-for-brains got the stupid idea that, all experience to the contrary aside, maybe they actually can do it.

Of course, this also begs the question: if a game can be sold at profit for less down the line, how the fuck can you justify the high price at release as something other than a money grab?

Re:They're insane.

[CSMatt]

The first sale doctrine is the good excuse. For someone who claims to have nothing against it, you seem to be all too eager to restrict markets that don't even need restriction, not counting of course the harm caused by these restrictions. (Used record stores, for example, could not exist without the first sale doctrine.)

I don't know what used stores you are taking about where the used copy is sold far above the price of a new game, but if they exist, then customers will just buy from the retailer selling the new games. Any business reselling games at or higher than the price of a new game is not going to be in business for long.

Re:They're insane.

[GigaplexNZ]

Of course, this also begs the question: if a game can be sold at profit for less down the line, how the fuck can you justify the high price at release as something other than a money grab?

To cover the initial development investments. Once they are paid off, profits are made and prices drop.

Re:They're insane.

[Grail]

Of course, you know the way that it will happen is that the single-player mode will work up until the final encounter, at which point it's revealed that you should have paid the $20 to unlock that NPC way back at the beginning of the game because they're pivotal to the successful completion of the final encounter. Can you imagine having to pay $20 to unlock Imoen or Jeheira in the Baldur's Gate series?

Re:They're insane.

[retchdog]

As far as I know, it varies state-by-state. Some let you disclaim it, a few don't or have restrictions.

Which is not to say that a video game with online/subscription-bound content is necessarily defective, again as long as it is made clear before purchase.

Really I think this is the next generation of "feelies". Instead of a material fetish (look it up) to make you less likely to sell the game and its copy-protection, they're going the crass way. Whatever. People will either pay or not.

Re:They're insane.

[Destoo]

Like previous poster says, to cover initial dev, packaging and marketing costs.
You can also check the clothing industry, everything becomes on sale at 50% or less eventually.

Re:They're insane.

[Tink2000]

I presume those are multiplayer maps?
What about me ... I never play multiplayer.
You paid and got 14 maps.
I'll pay the same price and get 9.
Seems to me that you *points* should have to pay more for those extra maps. Instead, I have to pay for yours and mine.

Re:They're insane.

[startled]

When you decide to start punishing non-customers rather than finding ways to entice them into being customers, that's a really bad sign.

Then it's a good sign that they're enticing non-customers into being customers, right?

Gears of War 2 has special downloadable maps for people who buy the game new. People who buy it used still get the full single-player game, plus full multiplayer functionality-- they just don't get the bonus maps.

They've identified a problem with their business model, and instead of legislating to protect their business model (like the recording industry), they've found a solution. What's the problem?

Re:They're insane.

[mabhatter654]

we should dispose of our widgets each day when we are done enjoying them into recycle bins. Then go to work for credits in the factories recycling yesterday's "junk" into new cool items. Then nobody loses!!!

Re:They're insane.

[Grimbleton]

Oh? And why, pray tell, does a car lose several thousand in value the minute you take it from the dealer? Could that be, like with video games, the market's choice?

Re:They're insane.

[ProfM]

It's unfair that people are able to sell their assets without generating any profit for the manufacturer.

It's equally unfair that you're cutting the State Government out of sales tax revenue as well ... remember ... Joe Biden said it's "Patriotic to pay taxes"

Re:They're insane.

[betty111]

Peoples getting slapped for their movements in secondary market. Users are not aware of it. Betty MySocialBookmarking

Re:They're insane.

[eyal]

I would have much preferred to get through three levels of free content then decided the game was shithouse rather than having to learn that at the cost of $70.

Most publishers publish free demos that you can easily download.

Re:They're insane.

[putaro]

The renters and used game buyers *are* their customers.

The price that you can sell the game for is factored into people's buying decisions.

For example, say that there was no used car market. Would that affect what people are willing to pay for a new car? Of course.

Destroying the used market will simply mean that the retail price will go down.

Re:They're insane.

[Mattsson]

If nobody buy, they'll have to lower their prices.
Naturally, they keep as high prices as possible while still selling, just like they do at retail.

Today, games at retail are too expensive.
If companies like Epic want my money, they'll have to lower their prices, or I'll look for their software at second-hand instead.
If second-hand markets want my money, they'll have to keep reasonable prices, or I'll simply not buy the game at all.

Anyone who make stuff and make money by selling this, loose potential income when this is resold later, instead of scrapped. Why should entertainment software be set aside as a special case?

Re:They're insane.

[KDR_11k]

It's a rip-off but people fall for it. That's noone's fault except the people who trade it in for pathetic returns or buy used for a measly 5€ discount. There are some good reasons to buy a used game (mostly when the game is so old it's no longer sold new) and of course there's something like ebay where the buyer and seller meet at more reasonable prices. There's also always the risk of getting a faulty game that is too scratched to work or fails to save (for cart games), dirty or missing parts of the package like the manual or the box. IMO the 5€ discount is too low for that risk but I guess other people are willing to take it.

As long as people are willing to be ripped off they will be ripped off. Using technical means to circumvent explicitely granted rights is not acceptable and should be illegal.

Re:They're insane.

[Eivind]

Nonsense. Very few people are -squarely- in one camp.

I imagine I'm quite average: New games that I really want to play, I buy new, often at a premium price shortly after release. If I want to try out some older game, sure I'll grab the $20 copy in the used-bin rather than the $39.95 new copy.

I've probably bought 50 games new for PS2 and PS3 combined. This means I'm "not their customer" ?

Several games I've first rented, because I wasn't sure if they where any good, then subsequently bougth. This was true for Shadow Hearts for example, I rented the first game, and subsequently bought the second and third in the series.

Re:They're insane.

[KDR_11k]

No but the people who trade used games in or stock the rental stores are.

Re:They're insane.

[Actually, I do RTFA]

you've talked to developers who were saying "... I really wish I had a unicorn."

At least, being game developers, the fact that unicorns only associate with virgins isn't an issue.

Re:They're insane.

[KDR_11k]

Well, this approach would mean you'd pay the 70AUD anyway. They're not talking about making the game cheaper, they just put an unlock code in there that can only be used once and costs a lot of money to get otherwise. The buyer of the new game is unaffected except the resale value is much lower (so someone who wants to buy, play, sell sees the game as more expensive), someone who buys it used has to shell out big money to get the game complete in addition to what they paid for the game itself. Demos already exist and they are usually free to download.

Re:They're insane.

[Waccoon]

I'd like to punish all those people who buy a game for $50, trade it in for $2 of store credit, and then allow the store to turn around and tries to resell it for $40.

What surprises me so much about the used game business is how many used games are available. If consumers are so willing to be part of the system, can you really bypass it?

I prefer PC gaming, and I almost always buy games new. But, even though I have a lot more money than I did a decade ago, I don't buy as many games as I used to, thanks to the endless amount of stupidity in the PC gaming industry. I, for one, do not think of cracks as a solution. I just play games on consoles, or go without.

Oh yeah, and I complain about it constantly, so developers know why I don't buy their games. I know it's futile, but it's all I can do.

Re:They're insane.

[awshidahak]

outside? wheres that? i dont think ive ever been there before. could you send me the url plz?

Re:They're insane.

[KDR_11k]

Never bought a used game with defects I see? Discs scratch, battery saves fail, manuals and boxes disappear, ...

The third parties only make money from resale because the initial sale doesn't make them any. Do you see stores sell used tools? Used furniture? AFAIK no stores sell both new and used clothes either. Only game stores sell both used and new games while also complaining about the tiny profit margins on new games that are too low to even cover all expenses. Meanwhile clothes seem to have incredible markups judging from the price drops they regularly get.

Re:They're insane.

[WraithCube]

I haven't looked to far into how its all setup, but if they are indeed 'single use codes,' it can cause problems for legitimate customers. If their xbox breaks or they bring the game to play at a friend's house or the data gets erased ect. they would be unable to access that content.

It takes away legitimate resale rights of the consumer as you have purchased those maps, but have no way to sell them. As mentioned before it also hurts those without online capability.

In addition, if this were a pc game I suspect there would already be a download up for the extra content entirely bypassing the code.

Re:They're insane.

[totally bogus dude]

Probably because that's incredibly difficult to do.

Even games like Fallout 3, which have an incredible amount of content, will become boring after a while. At most, I can play through the full game and explore everything twice, once with a "good" character and once with an "evil" character. Maybe if you're really dedicated you could do it again as a neutral, and another just being random. Fallout has a lot of gameplay in it, but also cost a mint to create.

A lot of people won't like Fallout or the GTA series (which also have a lot of gametime if you're into that type of game) simply because it's not the kind of game they like. Some of the games I've really enjoyed have been adventure games, and playing through them more than once is generally pretty pointless. That doesn't mean I don't want them to keep making those kinds of games though.

The Hitman series are amongst my favourite games, but there isn't very much replay value there.

Even if you get an endlessly playable game like e.g. a sports title, it will get boring and repetitive after a while.

The only real way to make a game "worth keeping" while also making it "worth playing in the first place" is to keep producing new content and updates for it. But doing that costs money, so it just doesn't work with a "sell it in a box" sales method. This is the World of Warcraft style - you pay a monthly fee and they can use that to keep expanding the game.

I think there's a lot of value in this idea, personally. I also think Spore's "massively singleplayer" concept is a good idea, and actually Fallout 3 would be a good candidate for this kind of service. The game world can be continually expanded by opening up all those barred doors in the cities you can't enter, or just expanding the dimensions of the Wasteland as they find new things to populate it with. Even better: release easy to use editing tools so the players can create content, and then used a paid system to distribute it in an easy way. The value-add to make it worth paying for would be that people at Bethesda would vet the new content for quality and appropriateness, make sure it's properly integrated, and so on. You could reward gamers who are providing good content with free access to the service, but frankly a lot of people would be happy to do it without additional reward, anyway. Creating things is fun, especially if you make it easy to do.

The downside is that would tie up staff who might be more interested in working on the next project than babysitting an old title. But I think this would be a great way of earning residual income from a title that cost so much to develop in the first place, and would help keep it fresh and interesting for your customers. It also has the side-effect of keeping people interested in the "property" and the company in general.

Re:They're insane.

[KDR_11k]

Doesn't make sense, all money made from the game is the same, whether you already paid for dev costs or not. The price drops are just to sell the game to people who aren't willing to pay full price (which get more as the game gets older and less "relevant"). Nintendo has been preaching that games shouldn't get pricedrops because that reduces their sales at full price so Nintendo games almost never get any price reductions these days. No idea how that's working out for them but I'm buying fewer of their games as a result.

Re:They're insane.

[DDLKermit007]

They most certainly aren't. Here is my gripe though. I paid $60 for Gears of War 2. In my purchase price was the commonplace assumption that my game has some monetary value if I want to sell it. With these one time use codes that lock parts of the game to my console (5 maps, and 2 guns) that will impact the resale value of my purchase. This was all done without notifying the customer that would happen. Or ya know, the ability to loan my game to friends, and have them able to play everything I can.

On a more realistic note though. I doubt I will ever sell Gears of War 2 (I don't sell or trade my games usually), but that's pretty flipping stupid. Especially since I like loaning my games out. Expect lawsuits from this bout of stupidity.

Re:They're insane.

[Bootarn]

I agree. I want to be able to go to either a store or a yard sale and get a game, then run it on my machine. Period. Having parts of games as DLC is annoying and stupid - there's no guarantee that you can pick up a game ten years later and still be able to play it, due to servers taken down etc.

I love my Atari games. They continue to function year after year. Some of them are nearly twenty years old. You might call them a gamer's heritage. What if games become unplayable after, say, five years? A vital part of gaming history could be lost.

Re:They're insane.

[KDR_11k]

The Wii just got the game Space Invaders: Get Even in Europe that has such a model, there's no disc to purchase but the base game (500 points, 5EUR/5USD) only includes one mission. The remaining 6 missions have to be bought in packs of two for 500 points each so for all missions you pay 2000 points (would be the most expensive downloadable Wii game at that price, they went with downloads instead of a retail release though). As far as I can see people are already complaining about being nickel-and-dimed.

Re:They're insane.

[GigaplexNZ]

Doesn't make sense, all money made from the game is the same, whether you already paid for dev costs or not.

Not true. You ever heard of things called interest or ROI? Investors don't like to wait forever for their returns as they would just invest elsewhere. The economy is a little more complex than just "Total Spent" and "Total Earned".

Obviously there is more than just one factor that causes the gradual price drops. You see it across a wide variety of industries, not just video games. One of the reasons that video game prices get discussed so much is that they are very popular among young kids who don't have a lot of disposable income to spare.

Re:They're insane.

[KDR_11k]

EA lost 40% of their value this year. They're posting losses in the billions. They must have done something seriously wrong in that time...

Re:They're insane.

[Keill]

If people and companies are making more money reselling your product than you're making selling it new, then you have a problem - and it's NOT with the resellers - (though of course you'd like to think so).

In other words, if you can't sell enough new copies of a product, and/or get enough people to buy and keep that product in order to minimize the 'losses' to the 2nd hand market in order to make a profit and stay in business, then guess what? You don't deserve to...

A lot of people in the book industry hate the 2nd hand market too, but without it, they wouldn't actually be able to make as much money - why?

The way the book market deals with the 2nd hand market, is to release as many new books as possible. The reason they can do so, is that the development, production and distribution of a book is so well known, and the industry is no so mature, that they know how to use it to make the most amount of money, and keep everyone happy...

The reason the computer games are having problems, is that their market is not as mature, and they haven't figured out how to get the market working properly yet, with the biggest problem being the overall cost of developing the games to begin with. But that's NOT the consumers fault, and any attempt to place all the blame and burden on the consumer for their own failures will be a quick way to go out of business. (I hope).

Re:They're insane.

[BillyGee]

Except they will buy from them again. The real world doesn't have the percentage of zealots that slashdot has, meaning in the real world, a statistically insignificant number of people care about who makes the game they want. They've heard about the game from somewhere, their friends are playing it and now they want it. You really think someone who wants Unreal Tournament 2010 is going to go "ah crap, that's made by those Epic bastards who screwed me over, forget it, I'll not play that game even though my friends are playing it"

Re:They're insane.

[Leonard Fedorov]

As much as I'd love to believe you, I'm gonna need a citation.

Re:They're insane.

[mobby_6kl]

That's not a very good analogy. Where's BadAnalogyGuy when we need him most? Anyway, the used car market is quite important (to people and manufacturers alike), and I assume this applies pretty much everywhere. When buying a new car, most people who aren't planning to drive it until it falls apart consider its future sale price as part of buying decision. If car A costs 20k new and will sell for 10k in 5 years while car B also costs 20k new but 13k used, car B is, all else being equal, more attractive to new car buyers, and thus the manufacturer is likely to sell more of them.

This is of course very simplified, but it shows that if a person can resell the game, they'll have more money to buy a new one. Unless, that is, they get something like two bucks for their game while the store resells it for $40*. In this case, the $2 are unlikely to have an impact on anything, while the reseller can easily undercut the prices of new games, leaving the developer/publisher nothing. I've given up on Epic a long time ago, but including some bonus content for the first buyers isn't such a terrible idea. An alternative is to lower prices in an attempt to reach a wider market which obviously exists, but this depends on how low the resellers can go with their used game prices. It might very well be impossible to compete with used games on price.

*I actually have no idea what the real numbers are in this case, as I've never tried to sell my games or buy a used one, but that's what somebody posted in this thread.

Re:They're insane.

[GigaplexNZ]

That's not a very good analogy.

Car analogies rarely are.

Re:They're insane.

[KDR_11k]

The game doesn't have to be worth keeping FOREVER, just long enough that most of the sales have gone by and preferrably until a price drop happens. I think multiplayer is a pretty piopular method of ensuring that.

Re:They're insane.

[n3tcat]

They've identified a problem with their business model, and instead of legislating to protect their business model (like the recording industry), they've found a solution. What's the problem?

I feel like you just ripped up on my mental e-brake. You're completely right. This is exactly what we wanted RIAA to do.

Perhaps the only problem is the bad taste in our mouths from the overly complicated rootkit DRM measures over the past couple years. Maybe we're looking at these new solutions with those memories still fresh and it's causing us to have this knee jerk reaction. That, and steering Slashdot groupthink is like herding kittens.

Re:They're insane.

[totally bogus dude]

True, but again for story-heavy games that's very very difficult/expensive to achieve.

Not that Epic make story-heavy games...

Re:They're insane.

[Anonymous Coward]

Damnit, I really hate when Microsoft does things like... What? oh. *Ahem* Damnit, I really hate when EA does... What? Apple? SCO? Epic? Who the hell are Epic?

Re:They're insane.

[KDR_11k]

here. Looks like I was wrong with the 40%, that looks more like 60%. There's a quarterly loss of 300 million USD, that would be a billion over a year if it stayed constant. Not sure how much they really lost, the billions figure was just something I read in comments on a forum.

Late Thursday, the company reported that its net losses grew in the second fiscal quarter thanks to a sharp rise in expenses. Revenue also climbed, thanks to strong sales of video-game titles such as "Madden NFL," "Spore" and "Rock Band 2."

So revenue is up, sales are up but the company is bleeding money like mad. Seems this whole talk about next generation games costing too much to be profitable has something to it.

Re:They're insane.

[iainl]

Indeed. It's working rather well for Criterion - Burnout Paradise continues to be played, and people continue to purchase it new, because there is still free download content being released.

Re:They're insane.

[stormguard2099]

Of course, this also begs the question:

no, that simply raises the question. begging the question refers to a logical fallacy where one uses circular reasoning.
http://begthequestion.info/

Re:They're insane.

[montyzooooma]

Do they seriously think their customer base will stand for behavior like that? Anyone who has ever bought a used game will cease to buy any games, new or used, by companies that try to pull this shit. Consumers don't like being raked over the coals.

Actually it will probably just reduce the perceived value of used games making them cheaper for the resellers to buy and sell. Most people don't actually finish the games they buy so that final boss battle doesn't matter. Sales figures vs Xbox Live gold subscriptions also suggests that less than half of 360 users are even online.
I realise that those of us talking about this on an Internet "message board" are more likely to game online but it's still not the norm.

Re:They're insane.

[Schadrach]

So you shine a red laser pointer on the ground and wiggle it until they go? Neat.

(As an aside, there's nothing like a red laser pointer to work like a leash for a cat, especially since if they are trying to chew it off, the cat is already in your hands (though likely not in the way you intended).

Re:They're insane.

[FlyveHest]

Seeing that a publisher makes 0$ from a game being sold used, I don't really think they will care all that much.

The bad-rep impact will possibly make a small dent in games sold, but, i'm guessing that the upsurge in people who bought used games before, but will have to buy new now, will offset that nicely.

Re:They're insane.

[meringuoid]

No one (or at least, very few) rents or buys used games all the time. The average customer likely buys used sometimes, and buys new sometimes. Now they're screwing him over, and he'll never buy from them again.

Actually, he'll just buy less often. The price of a new game is £X. The expected return when it is sold on the second-hand market is £Y. Then the cost to the customer is £(X - Y). If you eliminate the second-hand market, then you have effectively jacked up the price of your game by £Y. That will put off customers, who will therefore buy fewer games. Until you cut prices by, oh, about £Y, leaving you right back where you started.

The publishers are being paid for second-hand sales, because the existence of a second-hand market allows them to charge more for a new product than they could otherwise.

Re:They're insane.

[FlyveHest]

Now they're screwing him over, and he'll never buy from them again.

Nice thought, never gonna happen. Look at all the uproar over DRM in recent EA titles, and yet, the games have sold like hotcakes, as have other EA titles, even though the community as a hole have stated "WE DON'T WANT THAT, WE'RE NOT GONNA BUY!"

Problem is, everybody thinks that everyone else will stop buying, and therefore purchases it themselves, "'cause a single copy isn't going to matter"

Re:They're insane.

[Anonymous Coward]

Except it's not "fair use" as you said. It's the "doctrine of first sale." Two totally different things.

Re:They're insane.

[antic]

Surely there's a difference between some "special downloadable maps" and (as stated in the summary) "the final boss"?

Re:They're insane.

[WillAdams]

Won't the codes be monitored per usage and tied to a specific console serial number?

William

Re:They're insane.

[Anonymous Coward]

In this case the technical term is not "fair use" but "first sale." That is, the manufacturers' control extends only up to the first time the item is sold, and they have no continuing influence over the second and subsequent sales (resales).

This is also why international editions of textbooks that say "This is only to be sold in India!" can be sold legally in the USA: that warning message has no legal force.

Re:They're insane.

[Ayavaron]

A new car instantly loses value on purchase because the seller's profit margin has no resale value.

Re:They're insane.

[sabre3999]

Go to EBGam... err, Gamestop now isn't it? But yeah... recently released games? If you trade one in to them its usually $20-25 to your pocket here. But when they go up on the rack for sale, the prices have suddenly risen to $55. To me, that really just screams "Hey! Don't take your chance on something that might be scratched to oblivion, spend $5 more and get a new copy." This is of course in the US, and it's this way in every Gamestop I've ever set foot in. Probably the other chain stores as well (though Game Rush is the only other chain I can think of)

Re:They're insane.

[KDR_11k]

Investors wanting a certain timeframe doesn't mean the money you earn before break even is different from the money post break even. The prices react to falling demand, not anything being paid off. If the demand stays high the price stays high, if the demand falls off quickly or never really appears in first place the price goes down very fast to at least get some money back. This is completely independent of the dev cost as paying that off doesn't affect the sales.

Re:They're insane.

[NoisySplatter]

I worked at an EB Games/Gamestop and I thought that whole $5 mark down thing was pretty dumb too, but if your Gamestop sells people scratched games then they're just being assholes. At our store we would show the customer the quality of the disc before they bought it and made sure they went home with something playable. If a trade in was scratched then it got sent to the company for resurfacing.

The thing that really annoyed me was the pressure to sell their magazine subscriptions and "disc warranties". I quit shortly after they tried to get us to sell mobile phones, Helio Mobile to be precise.

Re:They're insane.

[jgtg32a]

I don't think there has ever been a piece of software released w/o an "AS IS" clause. If they didn't have that then they could get hit w/ a lawsuit if their product blows up, or they could even be responsible if their product dies because of someone else's software kills their software.

Re:They're insane.

[LingNoi]

Interesting however the book publisher doesn't have the ability to burn the book if you sell it anywhere else.

Steam however disabled accounts of people who bought Half-Life 2 from Thailand, making it impossible to play unless those people bought another more expensive copy in their own country.

I'm not saying it's a bad thing or a good thing they did this however you should be aware of the kind of control that steam has over your property (it's not in fact your property, you're just licensing it)

Re:They're insane.

[NoisySplatter]

The real numbers are much closer than 2:40. It's more like 20:40. Games with a trade in value of $2 usually resell for >$15.

If you buy the game new and trade it in the next month you can expect to get about half the cost back. Of course the retailer will only give it a $5 markdown when they put it back on the shelf, but they're in the business for money.

If game developers want people to hold onto their games they should probably be thinking around the area of replay ability.

Re:They're insane.

[LingNoi]

Not true at all.. Look at EA's stock since the DRM lawsuits and spore came out.. It's completely plummeted to the ground..

http://finance.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:ERTS

Re:They're insane.

[sabre3999]

Yeah, I have to admit I've never been sold a scratched disc. My Gamestop has always been courteous enough to let me check it like you say. However, I have a few friends who ended up with bad discs after the 360 cloudy ring thing. They came from GS, of course, but IIRC it was before everyone knew to check for it.

You'd have been glad to have me as a customer, I always end up subbing to GI when I visit. Of course, I actually enjoy it so that might explain my willingness. Trying to push Helios is a little over the top though... kinda like when they used to carry Zunes and NGages (though admittedly at least the NGage was targeted as such.)

Re:They're insane.

[Eccles]

I don't see any plummeting of the stock. I will say, however, Spore is getting slammed in the reviews, largely for the DRM, and apparently isn't going to sell as much as EA had projected/hoped for as a result.

Is there anything as odious on the console side? PC gaming already seemed to be on the decline as consoles get more general purpose.

Re:They're insane.

[JasterBobaMereel]

I want to play a game - I don't have a fast internet connection ... so I am no longer a customer of the majority of the games companies because without an internet connection I am a pirate and cannot access the majority of the game (if any) even though I pay for it ....This is even with games that do not use an internet connection for anything else ....

Re:They're insane.

[sorak]

Another problem is that some states do not allow class action lawsuits, meaning that if you buy a $50 game, and have an issue, you can spend $10,000 trying to get your $50 back, or you can take the loss. Most EULAs also have provisions stating that, if you sue, the manufacturer gets to choose in which state to sue, meaning that they can choose the state in which they are most likely to have a favorable outcome.

The days of ownership are coming to an end.

Re:They're insane.

[UNKN]

Then developers should be going after Gamestop.

Re:They're insane.

[LingNoi]

How can you not see the big ass drop are you blind?!

Re:They're insane.

[NoisySplatter]

As much as I hated selling the magazines it was actually a pretty good deal if you bought more than $150 worth of used games a year since it would cover its own cost with the 10% off card.

Re:They're insane.

[Mitijea]

The way I play games, this could be a blessing. If I only had to pay for the games I played more than 80% of, I'd only be shelling out a tenth or less than otherwise.

As for unlocking the end boss, I hate boss battles and have been disappointed more than not with endings, so there isn't much incentive for me to pay the $20.

Re:They're insane.

[sorak]

And outlaw Christmas...Once you've done all the shopping, well, we call that November. That part should be legal, but Christmas is just one big socialistic holiday where people revel in the First Sale Doctrine.

Nobody makes money on Christmas Day, so let's make a Holiday where people go out and buy things and then burn them. Then, they call their buddies and say "Guess what! I got you a PS3, and I set it on fire!". Then that buddy is so disspointed about losing a PS3, that he runs out to Walmart and buys another one, and everybody wins.

Re:They're insane.

[Anonymous Coward]

(Used record stores, for example, could not exist without the first sale doctrine.)

The difference is that new records stores exist, and sell more records than the used records store.

Since the games retailers have decided not to sell new games any more if they can possibly help it, the publishers are saying "well f** you too" back at them, moving to online sales (xbox live, wii store) and things like that.

Re:They're insane.

[sesshomaru]

Is there anything as odious on the console side? PC gaming already seemed to be on the decline as consoles get more general purpose.

You're kidding right? Consoles suck, they are built from the ground up with DRM in mind. There is nothing more locked down than the big three consoles.

You can't write your own programs and run them on a console, small developers who don't buy expensive development kits can't write code to run on a console. That includes mod developers, even though consoles are edging slowly and carefully into allowing limited user created content. (The difference? On a PC you can mod software where it hasn't been approved by the console owner. This makes a huge difference. Oh and user created content that's limited to provided tools is very different from mod at will.)

Consoles are all about selling you the same content over and over again, and if they don't think it will sell you basically have to buy an older iteration of the console to play it.

Compare that to a PC, I can still play System Shock II on my new PC. There was a version rumored to be coming out for Dreamcast, that never came out, but if it had come out well guess what, I'd need to keep my original Dreamcast hooked up to play it. People are always coming up with things like DOS Box or tweaks for older games to keep them working even today.

It actually amazes me that people will talk about intrusive DRM on a PC and then as a solution suggest getting a console. It's like complaining about losing an eye and having someone suggest you pull the other one out as well for symmetry.

Re:They're insane.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you couldn't sell a game back if it sucked, a lot of people would be a lot more hesitant to buy a game. I know I would raise my standards for such a game.

While this is true for you and may even seem like the obvious mentality, few consumers base their purchases on actions of the industry. Hell, many are so oblivious about games that they need ESRB ratings to determine whether or not a game is safe for their kids. The fact is, people don't have time to learn enough about every game to make a correct decision.

This would be why there's a used copy of Spore for $60 in my local used music/games shop. The store owner had no idea about the 3 installs per cd key and it's unlikely that anyone buying it will know either. I just hope that the person who does buy it doesn't pop in the CD, find out that they are out of installs, and give up.

In the end, it simply requires too much invested time for most people to learn about these things and there is no tangible benefit.

Re:They're insane.

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's make a nice analogy with buying a car here, after all, GM doesn't get any cash if you sell your nice pickup truck right?

Now take all the nice satalites orbitting the earth, combine that with more advanced computing adjusting your motor and registration being stored in a nice central database, what about them asking the people that buy a secondhand car for 5000 dollars else they'll limit the car to 40 mph, seems fair right?

Nevermind that if they made a good product the guy earning the cash from the sale is likely to buy a new GM car...

Re:They're insane.

[Robyrt]

I'd like to punish all those people who buy a game for $50, trade it in for $2 of store credit, and then allow the store to turn around and tries to resell it for $40.

What surprises me so much about the used game business is how many used games are available. If consumers are so willing to be part of the system, can you really bypass it?

As one of the people who feeds the used-game racket, I am actually getting a good deal. The key is timing: I buy games upon release for $60, play 'em for 30 hours over 2 weeks, then trade them in for $30.

Epic's one-time unlock codes don't faze me. I'm getting a much better dollars-per-hour rate than other just-released entertainment (theater, hardcover books, CDs). The store makes $25 on the used game they buy from me. The developers get their cut because I bought new, not used. What's not to like?

Unless you play PC games. Then you're out of luck.

Re:They're insane.

[illumin8]

They've identified a problem with their business model, and instead of legislating to protect their business model (like the recording industry), they've found a solution. What's the problem?

Because it's unfair to consumers and violates the First Sale Doctrine.

For now, it is just "bonus maps" or something innocuous. Pretty soon they will disable the entire game unless you're the original purchaser. That means you'll never be able to sell your used games again, and nobody will be able to buy your used games.

Bought a game that sucked? You just bought a $60 paperweight, sucker.

No company since Sony with the rootkit fiasco has had more contempt for their legitimate paying customers. Personally, I won't be buying another Epic game again. It's bittorrent and piracy for me. If they are going to "steal" from their customers by eliminating our resale value, I don't feel bad about stealing the game from them in the first place.

The lesson to be learned here is "pirate often". These companies like EA with their ridiculous SecuROM DRM limiting installs and Epic need to be smacked down hard. They need to learn a financial lesson, that if you treat your customers like criminals, they tend to become criminals.

Re:They're insane.

[illumin8]

If I buy a game like this with a "first buy code" you know what the first thing I'd do would be? Post it online.

You can't do this because the codes are unique, and you register your code with their server to get the content that should have shipped on the game disc in the first place. Basically, it's extortion. Pay $60 at the store for part of the game, then we'll hold the rest of the game hostage until you either prove you're the first owner or pay another $20.

It would be kind of sweet if someone came out with a CD key generator that started blacklisting legitimate CD keys, so that paying customers had to return the game because their key had already been used by a pirate...

Re:They're insane.

[Samurai Tony]

According to European policy and the metric system you can no longer have a yard sale, you must now have a 0.9144 meter sale.

Re:They're insane.

[trdrstv]

As one of the people who feeds the used-game racket, I am actually getting a good deal. The key is timing: I buy games upon release for $60, play 'em for 30 hours over 2 weeks, then trade them in for $30.

Why not rent the game for 2 weeks then? Are you not in the US? Gamefly gives you 3 Games at a time for $20 a month, and would seem like a much better deal than what you're doing now (If you have no intention of keeping the game).

Re:They're insane.

[bradkittenbrink]

Even if that were the case, it doesn't matter.
The availability of a secondary market increases the price of the first sale. If everyone new there was no way to resell a game, a significant chunk of buyers would be a lot less likely to shell out $60 for one. Prices would naturally fall as demand decreased.

Re:They're insane.

[Joe Snipe]

Sounds double-plus good to me!

Re:They're insane.

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you tried selling a Steam game before? AFAIK even if you had the discs and key, you can't play it with a different Steam ID.

Re:They're insane.

[Dishevel]

The price of yards has fallen off sharply as they were overvalued to begin with.

Re:They're insane.

[Draknor]

You also paid the same price for a game with features (ie multiplayer) that you'll never use. Sorry, but that's the way the market works - manufacturers design their products to appeal to as many customers as possible. And those customers, in turn, have to determine if the product is right for them. He (presumably) paid $60 for a game with single + multiplayer + bonus maps. If (multiplayer + bonus maps) are zero-value to you, then you have to decide if the single-player content is worth $60 to you. If it's not, don't buy the game. If you can't find any single-player games that you find are worth $60 (or $55 used), then you may need to adjust your valuation scale, or find another hobby.

It's the same deal with phones -- you can't find a new phone that doesn't have a gazillion features that you'll never use, but you still have to pay for them because phone manufacturers & marketers have determined the marginal cost of adding those features will mean increased sales & higher profitability. If someone though a simple, no-frills phone would be a hot item, they would sell it. If no one is, and you think it would be, then you may have a hot business idea.

Re:They're insane.

[theaveng]

If you trade one in to them its usually $20-25 to your pocket here. But when they go up on the rack for sale, the prices have suddenly risen to $55.

It's only unreasonable if you pretend that EBgames does not have any expenses. But remember, they are paying ~$15 an hour for at least two employees to staff the store, plus ~$15 an hour for the manager/supervisor (about $600 a day), plus heating/air conditioning, plus advertising on television, in newspapers, or online, plus ~$10,000 a month rent from the mall, and on and on and on.

That is true for any business. When I worked for JCPenney we bought Levis for $14, and marked them up to $30. Doubling the cost is standard practice, because that's what it takes to cover operating expenses.

Re:They're insane.

[Eccles]

No, I misread the original linked chart which was for a couple of days, not the time period visible in your chart. Regardless, stock drops could be due to other causes (like our crappy economy); unexpectedly low sales are more direct evidence of something being amiss with a specific product.

You're kidding right? Consoles suck, they are built from the ground up with DRM in mind. There is nothing more locked down than the big three consoles.

But piracy apparently isn't quite as rampant, so they're not pulling this interference with resales, nor are the game developers themselves putting unremovable DRM stuff on my system. I buy and sell games via Amazon and the like, so it can be pretty cheap for me to own a game for a while.

Re:They're insane.

[Anonymous Coward]

The codes are already out there, and they are already one time use. THAT'S THE WHOLE POINT. Post your Windows serial online while you're at it. That's another non-reusable serial number that you can get banned for no purpose.

Re:They're insane.

[GuldKalle]

I really think you're on to the core of this subject. If there was no used-car market, fewer people could afford to buy a car, used or new. So even if people who buy used cars are not giving money to car manufacturers, they are still indirectly putting money into the industry by giving money to people who buy a new car, thereby helping them afford that new car.

Re:They're insane.

[sabre3999]

I suppose you have a valid point... When taking into account the amount of revenue it takes to keep a store successful, you can't make it with purely new merchandise being sold right at MSRP. However, I still say I should be given a better incentive for buying something that might be missing part of the package.

A recent example is Gears of War 2 (Saw a story on it earlier.) If you buy it new you get an unlock code for 2 guns and some multiplayer maps. Used, that content is most likely unavailable as the previous owner would have redeemed the code. What does that content translate into monetarily? I'd say about $5 (assuming it was priced as DLC, arbitrary as the number is.) Then, I'm not really saving anything by buying it used at $55 since I'm missing that locked content. Even if I don't care about the content, I know the game is still missing that value.

Further, what about missing manuals or other inserts? Certain RTS games come with full tech-tree layout maps. Space shooters often come with hot key maps which are useful as well. How much are those worth, and the price not compensated for? Don't get me wrong, if it's all there I'd happily pay (assuming the price of it new were significantly higher) but if it's missing shouldn't the price reflect that?

Re:They're insane.

[Penguinoflight]

Of course this is true. The dealers maintain high costs simply to have an effective presentation. Multiple cars to choose from as well as an excellent show room can be worth a large amount to someone easily tricked. Of course once you try to resell the car, none of the advantages of dealer pricing are transferred to the new owner.

There are other considerations as well, you can't choose which color you want from a private seller, since they only have one.

Re:They're insane.

[Anonymous Coward]

The actual developer of a game makes very little off of the game they produce. The vast majority of that "huge profit" you are talking about goes to paying back the publisher for the development and marketing costs, paying the 3rd party (Nintendo, Microsoft, or Sony) for the licensing and equipment costs, and keeping the lights on. In general the distributor makes more off of selling a game then the developer does.

Re:They're insane.

[brkello]

How about you just don't play the game at all? I think the lesson learned by game companies is that they read posts like this and realize a lit of people are useless twats that like to get things for free instead of paying for the work that was done.

I am sorry, the slippery slope argument is stupid. If bonus maps are acceptable, then it shouldn't be punished. If only having the final boss is unacceptable, then you don't buy it. It is as simple as that.

I'm tired of this boring old Slashdot group think that thinks it is ok to justify piracy. Either buy the game or don't. And if you are going to pirate, just shut up about it already. No one needs to know how you are breaking the law.

Re:They're insane.

[Still an AC]

I don't know what used stores you are taking about where the used copy is sold far above the price of a new game

Guess you haven't been on eBay lately. They used to be great for a deal, but now it's a bunch of junk that is sold for more then retail. Including used stuff.

Re:They're insane.

[perlchild]

And my whole point wasn't that they were making money or being profitable, but that the consumers do not band together to punish companies that do things they don't like.

If revenue is up, it only adds weight to my argument. Please wake me when their unsold inventory starts to worry them.

Re:They're insane.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you do that more then about 10 or 12 times a year , you are an idiot.

gamefly and I think blockbuster both have plans about $20 a month that would allow you to spend LESS money and get MORE games.

But hey .. I guess your rich and can just burn cash.

Re:They're insane.

[analog_line]

They realize it will directly hurt them eventually. If you couldn't sell a game back if it sucked, a lot of people would be a lot more hesitant to buy a game. I know I would raise my standards for such a game.

You used to be able to trade in Windows games at EB/Gamestop/What have you. Now once you buy a PC game it loses most, if not all of its resale value, thanks to account based play (stuff like Guild Wars, WoW), serials/key compromise (on several occasions I bought used software where the keys were still in use by the person who bought the game and traded it in), and DRM install count issues. PC game prices for everything except the blockbuster PC-only titles are often significantly less than their console-based versions (as an example, NHL 08 was $40 for PS2, and $20 for PC when I last looked), because no one is willing to shell out huge amounts of money for something that's worth nothing once you buy it. If they really want to send console gaming down the same crumbling road PC gaming is on, well, OK I guess, but they might want to engage a bit of self-preservation.

Re:They're insane.

[skroops]

Trying to make sense of this, real numbers may have made your point better, so let's see how your argument looks with them, substituting 50 for x and 20 for y.

Actually, he'll just buy less often. The price of a new game is 50. The expected return when it is sold on the second-hand market is 20. Then the cost to the customer is (50-20)=30. If you eliminate the second-hand market, then you have effectively jacked up the price of your game by 20. That will put off customers, who will therefore buy fewer games. Until you cut prices by, oh, about 20, leaving you right back where you started.

The publishers are being paid for second-hand sales, because the existence of a second-hand market allows them to charge more for a new product than they could otherwise.

OK I see what you're saying now. Good argument, though I don't see why you avoided using real world values since they are pretty well established.

Re:They're insane.

[Free the Cowards]

How is this going to entice non-customers into being customers?

"I see you've bought this game new! Even though we completely don't deserve it, please give us some more money so that you can have the full game. Have a nice day!"

This is not actually a very good strategy for making people buy your stuff.

Re:They're insane.

[OrugTor]

This is a recurring theme among certain slashdotters. "If I don't like how something is sold then I have the right to steal it."

Re:They're insane.

[Free the Cowards]

Why do you want to punish those people? They're free people, doing what they want to do, and it hurts nobody. Why not just let them continue?

The idea that the used games market should somehow be bypassed is something I can't even grasp. You don't get to control your product once you sell it. That's just a basic fact of life. If you really don't want people selling your game used, make it so good that they want to keep it. The used market also serves to support prices in the new market, so it's not as if game makers derive no benefit from it.

A good company will make money by building a great product that people want to buy. A mediocre company will think that they're building a great product, will see that they don't enjoy the same success as a great company, and will start searching for ways to punish their customers or their potential customers for not giving them more money. Obviously these tactics never work out in the long term, but it doesn't stop them.

Re:They're insane.

[philspear]

Probably, but I did mention that they'd be hurting themselves even more if they did that, the only way for that to work is to say you have to have a connection to play the game.

Re:They're insane.

[philspear]

I adressed that in the next sentence. Read the whole post, please.

Re:They're insane.

[skroops]

Normally I flat-out disagree with arguments justifying piracy, or piracy as a protest, but yours is especially good. It doesn't suggest that you are doing it to protest, you are doing it as a personal fuck-you to the man.

And I'd really like to jump on your bandwagon, but after some critical thinking of my own, I see that you are only trying to justify piracy. So first-sale does not apply to video games any more. If its legal to do that (and right now it looks like it is, since they are doing it), then they have jacked up their price by the amount of money you would have sold it for. So your game costs 60$ now. And you don't want to pay that, so you are going to pirate it. You don't have to pirate it, but you want to play it, and you don't want to pay 60$. You are a pirate.

Re:They're insane.

[JCSoRocks]

Exactly. They're shooting themselves in the foot. The very *reason* that Gears of War 2 was the second biggest freaking release was that so many people had played the game. Did they all buy it new? No... but they all got addicted to your franchise buy playing it used or renting it and now you've got new customers you wouldn't have otherwise gotten. Quit acting like idiots and realize that rentals and second-hand games = customer conversion.

Re:They're insane.

[Kohath]

The lesson to be learned here is "pirate often".

It's interesting how people who like to pirate and who like free stuff tend to find ways to learn that lesson over and over.

"X, Y, and Z things happened in the past. Therefore, gimme free entertainment."

Re:They're insane.

[theun4gven]

The difference is that new records stores exist, and sell more records than the used records store.

I'm fairly certain that Best Buy, Target, WalMart, Circuit City, etc. make way more on new games than on used games.

Re:They're insane.

[GarfBond]

Really? Your only option to something you don't like is "pirate often?" How about not getting the game?

They don't owe you the game. You don't owe them your money. If you truly believed in voting with your dollars, free market etc., then you wouldn't even give them the satisfaction of a +1 piracy statistic.

Taking a very principled stand and then proceeding to just pirate the game because you want it that badly is just cowardice and selfishness. Remember, video games are not a need and you don't *have* to have it.

Re:They're insane.

[Nick Ives]

There are states that let you disclaim merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose? That's mad! In the UK and, I think, all of Europe those are basic statutory rights. If these developers were serious about these sorts of schemes I doubt they'd be able to get away with them over here, I bet the courts would turn any purchased codes into the property of whomever bought them and make the first sale doctrine apply thereby making the whole scheme moot.

Re:They're insane.

[PingSpike]

This is what I was going to post. Seems a lot of stuff, defying reason, sells for more one ebay, used, then I can buy it new elsewhere.

Re:They're insane.

[Nick Ives]

Any business reselling games at or higher than the price of a new game is not going to be in business for long.

I've paid full price for second hand games on eBay before now for out of print games. That's just madness on the part of the publisher, they can clearly see people are still prepared to pay full price for back catalogue games but they let them stay out of print. Some publishers are better than others in this regard at least though.

Re:They're insane.

[Nick Ives]

Those are all already problems with Xbox Live. Your content gets assigned to both your account and the Xbox it was originally unlocked on so if you Xbox breaks you loose the ability to share your content with other people in your house who use your Xbox.

The upside of it is that when you go to someone else's house you can just log on to your Live account from their machine and download all the content you've already paid for. You don't, however, have any resale rights for the content you pay for / unlock on Live.

Re:They're insane.

[VeNoM0619]

"ah crap, that's made by those Epic bastards who screwed me over, forget it, I'll not play that game even though my friends are playing it"

"I'll not pay for that game even though my friends are paying for it."

Is what's actually going to happen.

Re:They're insane.

[Anonymous Coward]

But product degradation is already an inherent part of automobile ownership. By the time a pickup truck gets to its second owner, the upholstery is fading, the tires are worn, it has several dings in it, and the engine only has x number of miles left on it. Contrast that to a videogame disc, which is (usually, barring any major scratches) going to play exactly the same for the secondhand owner as the first. Imagine if the graphics were lowered, the AI didn't work so well, or the game only had x number of plays left on it. Then it would be comparable to an automobile.

Plus, using autos as an analogy is stupid anyway, because videogames are closer to consumable products than non-consumables. Imagine if I could buy concert tickets, see the concert, and then re-sell the same tickets to a friend who goes to see the next one. Or if I could eat a nice steak dinner at a fancy restaraunt, regurgitate it later (in exactly the same form as when the waiter first delivered it), and re-sold the meal to a buddy.

Re:They're insane.

[billcopc]

What will happen is what's already happening: we will pirate the DLC.

I'm perfectly fine with the add-on / expansion business, but the example they give is borderline fraud. Paying to see/beat the final boss ? What kind of crack-headed idea is that ? These publishers have severe tunnel vision!

They complain about the rental/resale business, but those businesses exist because the cost of gaming is already too high. The gaming industry created that void, that pricing vulnerability, and sure enough something came along to fill the void. Now they're pissed off ? Then they should try to compete, for once. $60 for a game is obviously too much for most people, which is why the $5.00 rental industry thrives and the pirate "industry" is booming.

Re:They're insane.

[Anonymous Coward]

Indirectly they are.

Someone people only afford to buy new games because they can trade them in, thus creating the used games market. If there were no used game buyers then the original game purchasers couldn't trade them in and would not be able to afford to buy new games in the first place...

It is about spreading the cost over more people. If they stop people from being able to do that then people will buy less. Unless of course they lower the prices to used game prices!

Why arn't games you buy online re-sellable anyway? It's just a licenece weather you buy it online or in a shop, correct???

Re:They're insane.

[Anonymous Coward]

But they never do, except when they reach "best seller" status or when the demand falls enough that no one will buy it at $60. Lots of games still go for $60, and then vanish completely from the market.

As for the "you don't fight the boss unless you pay" shit, well, it's shit. I don't think it'll stop people from buying a game, but it really screws over a lot of the gaming community.

Re:They're insane.

[illumin8]

I'm tired of this boring old Slashdot group think that thinks it is ok to justify piracy. Either buy the game or don't. And if you are going to pirate, just shut up about it already. No one needs to know how you are breaking the law.

I buy about 2-3 games at full price per month. I spend thousands per year on my games, but I only buy from companies that treat their customers right.

It's sad, but at this point we need to hurt those companies that are trying to get too aggressive about DRM the only way we can: financially. Boycotting their games isn't enough. Pirate their games and teach others how to pirate as well. That's how I do it and I recommend you do the same thing.

Re:They're insane.

[joystickgenie]

Well you know those titles that come out as greatest hits? Those are the games the make money for the developers. Basically everything else is lucky to simply breaks even.

Console game development usually works something like this. A company gets paid an advance by a publisher to make the product. This advance is used to bank roll the company while the title is in development. This has to be done because even if the title is low budget with a small cheap staff the developer has to pay the console manufacturer's exorbitant prices for development kits and licensing. Once the title is released all of the profit from the title goes to the publisher until the advance is paid back with interest. Once the advance is paid back the the profit is split between the publisher and the developer where the developer still probably only sees maybe $1 in profit per title (that is with the current $60 price tag).

By buying used you really aren't hurting the publisher too bad, the lions share of the mony goes to them, they are the first to start making money from sales. Your not hurting the console manufacturer, they were making money off the title before it was even released.

The person you are hurting is the developer. the developer need there to be not a good launch but longevity of sales to make money. So when after a week from release there are only 1 new copy of the game and 20 used it make it pretty hard for those developers to get that longevity that they need to actually make money on the deal.

Re:They're insane.

[GodInHell]

I wish you were right... but I know I'm too weak to live up to that. If the game is super-sex-expols-awesome, I'm going to buy it. But I will plot my revenge for decades.

Re:They're insane.

[CSMatt]

Really? How many stores sell new out-of-print records from old artists?

Re:They're insane.

[billcopc]

The problem with your math is you make the assumption that everyone resells their games after a certain time has passed. This is very far from the truth.

Most people hang on to their games, it's the magpie/collector aspect, and good games often have a nostalgic value attached, so people hang on to them and play them again in later years.

The people reselling their games are usually low-income (teens, failed adults who are too dumb to rent).

What the game industry should do, is eliminate the used market entirely and save themselves a lot of headaches and backhanded litigation by simply reducing the price of the product, to the sweet spot where the sales exceed any lost profits. Figure out some stats for used game sales, add those to your first-party sales, then divide it into your gross sales projections. Games will be anywhere from 20% to 40% cheaper, and more people will buy them.

Just look at what Nintendo and Sony have been doing with their "Platinum Releases" or whatever they call them. They take a best-selling games, slash the price in half, and sell another few million to the budget-conscious among their clientele. It goes against the "free market", which says high demand should dictate high prices, but in practice the reduced price creates an even greater demand, because you're breaking into a whole other demographic. A game is not a limited resource. It is bits on a disc. You can copy it ad infinitum at minimal cost. You can stream it over the internet for even less. The rules of the free market no longer apply.

Re:They're insane.

[billcopc]

No one needs to know how you are breaking the law.

Perhaps we talk about it, because we think the law is wrong.

I've been on Slashdot for a few years, as my UID will attest, and I can't really say I've ever seen any sort of groupthink. If anything, the community's attitudes are much less cohesive today that they were ten years ago, simply because the user base has diversified over time. Ten years ago, we were all supergeeks, mostly computer geeks at that, so you could perhaps distort that into groupthink, but really we were just like-minded individuals. It's not like people came here and changed their opinions just to fit in - that's very un-geekly.

There have always been those who support piracy, and those that don't. We're not here to tell people which one is right or wrong, we're just here to discuss the topic and share ideas so that each individual can make that decision for themselves. If you don't like piracy, then don't pirate. Nobody's shoving a torrent up your ass.

Re:They're insane.

[Free the Cowards]

You are missing a couple of key points.

First, that used market supports the price of the new game. A lot of people are spending $60 on a game knowing that when they're finished with it, they can sell it back to the store for $30 (or whatever the going price is for used game returns these days). If that suddenly ceases to work, then that's $30 of value that disappears from the game. They're going to be much less willing to put down $60 for the game if they can't resell it. The price that the game makers can charge goes down dramatically.

Second, it doesn't matter what bad effects the used game market has because they don't have a choice. If you're selling physical goods, those physical goods are going to get resold, period. People who buy physical goods expect them to be resellable. If the game makers want to disable reselling, then they will quickly find that their customer base disappearing.

To summarize: the used market does not hurt nearly as much as you think, and even if it does, it's just too damned bad.

Re:They're insane.

[billcopc]

Why do you want to punish those people? They're free people, doing what they want to do, and it hurts nobody. Why not just let them continue?

Uh, maybe because it's yet another small contribution to this lovely thing we call inflation. Creating money that's not backed by actual value leads to inflation. That $38 markup comes from where exactly ? Was there any significant value added to the product, vs its $2 acquisition condition ? No. In today's connected world, anyone can post anything online and connect directly with the buyer. The retail middleman is thus a parasite.

Re:They're insane.

[Free the Cowards]

If the retailer adds no value, why do people flock to him?

Oh that's right, because organization, inventory management, and sales are all added value.

If you want to buy your stuff directly from the sellers, go for it. But please don't think that you're somehow magically intelligent and everybody else is a complete moron for going through retailers.

Re:They're insane.

[powerlord]

No company since Sony with the rootkit fiasco has had more contempt for their legitimate paying customers.

You think Sony's rootkit fiasco are the be-all end-all of contempt for customers?

1) It happened a while ago.
2) customers balked (rightly so).
3) Sony stopped.

There are many more current abuses of customers that should really hold peoples attention more than something Sony did over three years ago (and has since recalled the product, gave a link to a class action settlement on their website, and attempted as best they could to rectify the situation).

How about the DRM on MS XBox360 that kept players from playing their own purchased content on a replacement 360 if they weren't logged into the internet? Not only were users affected by system that died prematurely, but due to their DRM policy, replacement consoles had to be connected to the internet in order to utilize the content (content was flagged for use by either the original console downloaded to, or by the user, but only when logged in). Connection down? No content for you. I hear the Wii is about as forgiving on downloaded content, even taking it to further extremes by not letting you edit your Miis if you've created they've been imported. They at least have had far fewer failures so I see it as less of an issue. In fact, the only console whose done DRM "right" this generation is Sony (5 licensed systems at a given time, redownload anytime you want). Maybe they learned from their mistakes.

Or Have you taken a look at the ridiculous DRM being used CURRENTLY by companies like EA did in SPORE? This is a a much worse affront to users. Not only does it install code that disables several legitimate systems in the computer, and can destabilize a system, it also imposes an install limit on the end-user.

Sorry for the rant, but I'm just sick and tired of people dredging up the "Sony rootkit fiasco" as the "worst thing in customer relations" when we've seen current abuses of consumers that are worse.

Re:They're insane.

[Free the Cowards]

Imagine if you could buy a house, live in it for a few years, then re-sell the house to a friend who can live in it for a few years too!

Re:They're insane.

[Anonymous Coward]

MS should really learn from Sony.

PSN has a much better model for DLC.

All DLC can be downloaded as many times as you want and can be active on up to 5 licensed systems at any given time. You can log into your PSN profile and remove system from active status, as long as a valid user account is on a system the DLC stays unlocked for everyone (only a very few games are tied to the PSN account that bought it only).

PS3 broke? Redownload your content and deactivate the old account.
Going to a friends house? Sign in on their PS3 and download the content and play away.

Re:They're insane.

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course their customer base will put up with it, because their customer base will be unaffected.

The only people who will be affected are people who currently aren't giving any of their money to the people who deserve it -- the developers.

Re:They're insane.

[Theoboley]

It's entirely possible that this "code" would end up on a torrent website as it would stand anyway. Unless they random generate codes, but even then hackers would get ahold of something to break that code and shell out freebies to everyone. Look at Microsoft office/OS products and you'll see this theory go up in smoke.

Re:They're insane.

[Anonymous Coward]

Cut the crap. Every retail store has had sales where buyers are given gifts for buying. From bundled items, to free batteries with your game console.

Do those items 'reduce' your resale value?

And don't get me started on your ludicrous jump from "They gave me free gift for buying" to "THEY WILL MAKE ME PAY AGAIN FOR CORE FUNCTIONALITY". I'd ask you to provide evidence for such an assumption, but its obvious you've knee-jerked so hard that you cracked your skull.

Re:They're insane.

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally, I won't be buying another Epic game again.

If you read the summary, he's not proposing that Epic will be doing that, he's mentioning that he's heard other developers talk about doing it, and is using that as an extreme example.

It's bittorrent and piracy for me.

So in other words, you're going to keep doing what you were already doing, but now you have yet another tissue-paper-thin justification?

Re:They're insane.

[Anonymous Coward]

They will if it costs them twenty bucks to do so all of a sudden.

Or, they will continue to work around this obstacle by playing from the original machine.

It has been noted that consumers take the path of least resistance. if you place obstacles in their way, completely arbitrary ones? They'll work around that, either through piracy or by slipping through the loopholes that are impossible to close.

You forget that some of their friends will also statistically fail to reach that final boss without twenty dollars. Maybe not on this release, but later. Sooner or later they'll notice this arbitrary cost increase.

And if the game has not been all that interesting or compelling to play in the first place? The developers are not going to make their money back all too quickly.

Re:They're insane.

[Theoboley]

Agreed... Someone must've failed marketing 101.

Re:They're insane.

[GigaplexNZ]

You appear to have missed where I said:

Obviously there is more than just one factor that causes the gradual price drops.

You are correct that demand has a significant effect, probably more so than economics, but the fact is that money now actually does differ to money later. You have to take inflation, interest, alternative investment opportunities etc into account.

Re:They're insane.

[Nick Ives]

This is one of the reasons why I'm thinking about getting a PS3. I'm sure MS will change their policy to match as soon as PSN activity exceeds that of Live but until then I'm sure they're intent on getting as much cash out of each user as possible, which is to be expected from a business after all.

Re:They're insane.

[Chosen Reject]

People who hold on to their games still fit with what the GP said. That's why he didn't use numbers. I'm like a magpie when it comes to games, so for me, the Y is 0. For people who sell their games, Y would be different.

Re:They're insane.

[MaineCoon]

As are other game company's stock. Yet revenues are up - EA's last quarter was up 40% year over year from FY08 and 15% from FY07.

http://www.nasdaq.com/aspx/revenueepssummary.aspx?symbol=ERTS&selected=ERTS

If you're going to try to use a company's financials to prove a point, you should at least have a basic understanding of those financials, and use USEFUL numbers (here's a useful hint: in this market, stock value is hardly a useful indicator of a company's success)

Re:They're insane.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm looking at that data and all EPS (Earnings per share) are in the minus. Doesn't matter if the company is "making money" if rats are leaving the sinking ship, no?

Re:They're insane.

[retchdog]

Do you guys have an exemption for at least freely licenced stuff?

Re:They're insane.

[Anonymous Coward]

Your big ass drop just happened to happen exactly at the same time as the housing market crash hit it's peak.

Re:They're insane.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh give it up. You've lost. If something raises the question it begs the question now, the language has changed. It does that.

Re:They're insane.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, there're right on the money. The problem with used games is that its one step short of outright piracy. The used game you buy for 5 bucks less is 100% profit for the store. The developer never sees a penny of that transaction. Thats how Gamestop got so filthy rich. They're the ones who are to blame for this, because they've been screwing over both sides badly.

Re:They're insane.

[Anonymous Coward]

Mi love you long time?

Please do learn English before posting on Slashdot.

Re:They're insane.

[brkello]

I would probably be considered a "computer geek" as I have a Masters in Comp Sci. So I can identify with a lot of the opinions expressed on Slashdot. I just don't on this particular topic.

Of course people on here are telling you what is right or wrong. They say what the companies are doing is wrong and so they feel that it is right to pirate. I honestly don't care if people pirate or not, I object to people encouraging others to do so and get modded up for their (always morally wrong) justifications for them.

It's fine to object to DRM. It is fine to complain about copyright and IP. But people's work need to be protected. I can identify with that since I write software. I have a right to be compensated for the work I do. If other people simply take that work from me without compensation, then I lose the incentive to work at all. I like gaming...I don't want developers to quit what they love because they can't make a living. I want to continue to play awesome games. Pirates interfere with this...and the more they do it, the more stupid DRM will be created, which will make more people pirate, etc. But the initial wrong starts with the pirate. If he/she didn't exist, we wouldn't have this problem. Reacting to a wrong with a wrong is bad, and the companies should find the least painful way to protect themselves, but you have to understand the problem all starts with the pirate.

Re:They're insane.

[brkello]

Just encourage them not to buy it. Same effect but you are morally on the higher ground. Pirating the game DOES NOT do more than boycotting. It only encourages the company to come up with different and new DRM that is even more annoying to legitimate consumers like me.

Re:They're insane.

[Anonymous Coward]

This works on both sides though. When initially placing the price of a product you take the consumers use of it into consideration. If the end user is going to sell the product again to other consumers you rice accordingly. The $50 price point for new titles did not get set initially with the used market in mind. it is set for development costs licensing and profit margin alone, the expected return started at $0. It started as a base price and then the used discount got added later.

so what happened isn't that the price of the product got jacked up when game stop started pushing the used market so hard the price of the product got discounted due to the return value increasing and the profit margin shrank.

Re:They're insane.

[asretfroodle]

That's the point. The second hand titles are the defective ones, not the new copies.

Re:They're insane.

[ceoyoyo]

The new copies are defective too, if they're not self contained. Would you not say that a book is defective if you get it home, realize the printer only included half of it, and your only option is to download a (DRMed) PDF of the rest?

Re:They're insane.

[Miseph]

WHAT???? The English language isn't permanent and unchanging? People don't always speak in the terms of formal logic, and instead use popular turns of phrase? No wonder that everyone looks at me funny when I try to speak in Old English, I just thought they were illiterates who had never read Beowulf, but now I realize I was just being a tool.

Seriously though, the my usage of "beg the question" actually fits that definition, I just don't feel like holding people's hands through reasoning it out. Think about it.

Re:They're insane.

[KDR_11k]

It's a code for a download service, they can and probably will remember which codes they issued and check them off in their database as they are used. I don't think there are any key generators for the codes used for the Live points and time cards. If this was just an unlock code the game itself processed, well, there wouldn't even be a reason for it to be single-use only.

Re:They're insane.

[KDR_11k]

But what does that have to do with whether the development costs are paid off?

Re:They're insane.

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it is insightful. The idiot is you.

Re:They're insane.

[Anonymous Coward]

(always morally wrong)

In your opinion.

Morals are functions of personal values. You don't get to dictate those to others. You are welcome to debate them. You would do yourself a favor in the credibility department if you stated your opinions as such and stop trying to spout them as facts.

Re:They're insane.

[ritcereal]

I originally pirated Fallout 3 mostly because I'm not a big fan of those types of games (for instance I could never get into Oblivion etc). Anyways, as I was 1/2 through the game I bought it because it was so awesome (online of course). By the time it got to me (matter of a few days) I had already beaten the game and was happy I purchased it.

In a few months down the road I'll load it up, and play the game a completely different way and it'll be reasonably new to me again. It has replayability, just not the traditional way.

Also, lets look at Epic's amazing offers...they complain about piracy, second hand market (which btw does a furniture company make money when I sell my couch?), and pretty much ANYTHING they can. Hmm I remember paying a pretty penny on Unreal Tournament 3 (pre-ordered it - what a mistake). Not only was the Demo not finished (who the fuck makes an alpha demo and thinks is acceptable?!), but the ENTIRE game was amateur hour! I felt COMPLETELY ripped off. By the time I had my physical copy, everyone who knew a damn thing about UT3 ditched their copy and those who WERE going to buy it didn't buy it and my copy is now completely worthless.

Maybe if Epic actually returned to what put them on the map (making games instead of bitching about the market -- lets be honest, piracy and the 2nd hand market haven't just appeared out of nothing - they were around when Unreal Tournament came out in 1999 and even with the original Unreal as well). Needless to say, Epic your failing at making good games so you deserve to not bring in as much money.

Stop bitching and get back to work. That's what I have to do EVERY day. I don't get handouts for nothing - what a rough world we live in.

Re:They're insane.

[_2Karl]

You can't resell Halflife 2 IIRC. or any Steam based title.

Re:They're insane.

[Nick Ives]

Yep, merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose are part of the Sale of Goods Act here in the UK. Just about any time money changes hand for something then that act applies, at least for consumers. Of course that means that if you get something free then you basically have no rights if it doesn't work. The law isn't as tight when it comes to business purchases however, so a business can sign a contract that waives rights under the Sale of Goods act.

Re:They're insane.

[brkello]

Ok, debate. Tell me why it is morally correct to take someone's work without paying for it?

Re:They're insane.

[AkaKaryuu]

While were at it, lets just redesign the US currency to now Read "This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private only if a corporation get their beak wet too."

Re:They're insane.

[Reapy]

100% with you on that. Maybe they need to come up with a new phrase for their argument fallacy, because begs the question doesn't seem to make sense from my understanding of the word beg.

hat page linked is pretty offensive really. Its like they reserved 3 words, each with individual meanings, used in that order, to act like a single word.

Look up any WORD in the dictionary and it can have several meanings, sometimes nothing to do with one another, completely unrelated. All of a sudden, when I place 3 words together, they MUST MEAN THIS ONE THING AND ONE THING ONLY?!?! This makes no sense to me.

Begs the question... That seems like acceptable English to me. It makes sense to me, in that, when I make statement A, it is practically begging me to ask question B. Why am I restricted to just say, "raises" the question, when I would like to use another word to be more descriptive. Raises the question is boring. BEGGING the question has more oomph, and more imagery behind it.

Reading the definition of beg's the question, the fallacy, it is not intuitive at all. I know what "begs" means, I know what a question is, I know how "the" is used, why can't I understand what they meant. Amazing, I have to do something crazy like evaluate the context in which these words were used, to select the proper definition to apply to the combination of words supplied.

Crazy, I know, right?

I guess we can just be happy that a zealot like this is spending his time defending the phrase "begs the question", rather then something else equally stupid that might actually effect my life. Or maybe affect it.

Re:They're insane.

[demallien2]

I just saw your sig, and I can't help wondering - have you considered the fact that it is saying that it's always women that find you overrated? And you want to brag about that? Weird...

Re:They're insane.

[Free the Cowards]

Please try to remember what site you're posting to.

Re:They're insane.

[Pichu0102]

They need to learn a financial lesson, that if you treat your customers like criminals, they tend to become criminals.

Which they can then complain about and get laws passed to force them to cough up the money.

Isn't it wonderful how we get screwed either way?

Re:They're insane.

[Anonymous Coward]

Chrono Trigger still retails around $50+ for a used copy around these parts (more if its in box) (SNES) and simant (SNES) retails around 14.99+ at used game stores. Some older game retain value due to rarity or lack of supply. For example a store in California with 20 copies of the original mario brothers for the NES is gonna sell them cheap compared to a store in Iowa with only 1-3 copies. For newer games though I have never seen a used copy selling for more than the original. However with things like wiifit and the wii console you could make a pretty penny for selling the used ones at a slightly higher price because its actually in stock. This reminds me of the days of funcoland, software etc, and Babbages where the used games were valued according to the number of them they had.

Re:They're insane.

[somersault]

In these schemes it would only be the 2nd owner who would have to unlock the rest of the code. It would be tied to accounts, so the first person to log into the book would get the whole thing. The second person to log into it would only be able to read half of the book unless they authorised their account to read it. As someone who rarely sells anything, I'm quite happy to have all my stuff tied to an account (on Steam for example).

Re:They're insane.

[ceoyoyo]

Ultimately it doesn't matter. They can put all the codes and downloadable content they want on games and somebody will just hack the thing and release a full, "no-internet" copy. It WILL kill the used market, of course, but all the former purchasers of used games will just download the pirated version, and anybody who buys new games with the intention of selling them (quite a few do) will also have a strong incentive to pirate it.

Re:They're insane.

[Anonymous Coward]

For now, it is just "bonus maps" or something innocuous. Pretty soon they will disable the entire game unless you're the original purchaser.

You mean like Spore?

So...

[Anonymous Coward]

So if I rent a game, and I want to fight the final boss, I have to pay $20?

Epic Games..

[Beelzebud]

A once great game company. It's amazing that this is the same company that released those bonus packs for Unreal Tournament. They have really turned in to money grubbing whores. I blame people like Mike Capps.

Re:Epic Games..

[aweraw]

They were a once great PC game company. I blame the culture of console gaming for their current attitudes.

Re:Epic Games..

[bigstrat2003]

Not only that, money-grubbing whores who have said they're turning their backs on the very fans that propelled them to success (PC gamers). Fuck those guys.

Re:Epic Games..

[Captain Spam]

Funny how I think they left the PC game industry because they were whining about piracy, and how going console-only would solve that so wonderfully and magically.

And now, it's bitch, bitch, bitch all over again! It's the players' fault! Screw you, customers! What've customers ever done for them, anyway?

Re:Epic Games..

[Anonymous Coward]

First everyone is complaining how evil the music labels are because they can't adapt to modern world of freely distributable data.

Then some company DOES adapt to it and everyone here has a fit!

Re:Epic Games..

[Anonymous Coward]

Amusingly enough, George Broussard, who always impressed me as a fatter, older CliffyB, is over on Shacknews message boards parroting the same whiny bullshit.

Apparently all the guys we gave cash to thinking they would keep making good games have decided they just can't squeeze enough from us. Assholes.

Re:Epic Games..

[joocemann]

Did they not just put out GOW2, an amazing sequel to an amazing game!

Console gaming has nothing to do with it, nor is it something to get too upset about. If you don't like the product, don't buy it. Kinda easy, if you think about it.

Re:Epic Games..

[mobby_6kl]

GoW2 is a piece of shit sequel to a piece of shit game. The console gamers probably just don't know any better, but this doesn't change the facts. I didn't like the product so I didn't buy it, but that's Epic's problem, not mine.

Re:Epic Games..

[Anonymous Coward]

Rubbish, they moved to developing console games because of piracy being a problem on the PC, they've made this pretty clear in the past.

PC gamers pirating their stuff instead of buying it is the very reason they're like they are now. The console gaming attitude is the effect not the cause.

It's sad because their games really are still fantastic, Gears of War 2 is going to go down as one of the best games I've ever played, the story was fantastic and of decent length, the gameplay was fun, and the graphs are second to none.

I don't disagree that their comments stink, I certainly wouldn't ever buy half a game and then buy the other half online but console gaming as a reason has nothing to do with it. I was a PC gamer for well over a decade but now play both, as I've grown up I find less time and console games are just easier to get going and to pick up and put down. I also got rather sick of paying for £1500 worth of hardware to still only get mediocre framerates without the highest visual settings when I could just buy £200 worth of hardware and get perfect framerates and the highest settings by default. Console gaming racks up more money for the industry and is more popular for good reason.

I still play games like Warhammer online on the PC and some RTS' because they're just better suited to it or even only available on that platform. I don't know what the deal is with so many PC gamers here slagging off console gaming, it is possible to do both and both have their merits. With all consoles having online play now it's not even as if you can factor elitism into it because you see just as skilled players on consoles as you see on the PC.

Re:Epic Games..

[joocemann]

The sales figures serve to show that your opinion is a minority opinion. good games.

Re:Epic Games..

[bigstrat2003]

You'd have a point, except I never complained about the first point. Unlike 99% of the users here, I support copyright law.

it's not friday yet

[Shadow of Eternity]

When did epic and EA switch bodies?

In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

... a large printing company has started replacing the last page in it's books with a 900 number readers must call to find out the ending. Apparently the greedy buzzards weren't making any money when people checked books out at the library.

Re:In other news...

[Davey McDave]

Cue the "you must be new here", but RTFA.

"... I mean, we could have dropped the last half of the single player in GoW2 and made that downloadable, but of course that really would have upset people who don't have Live. I don't want to hurt customers who are just trying to play our game."

Re:In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

Good... then they're infringing on my patent! /calls lawyers

Killing used/rental

[jmorris42]

Ok, they want to kill of rental and used games. Fine. Doesn't matter to me.... but the value of games as a bought item like a DVD or book is a lot higher to me than a non-tranferrable license. Price accordingly and I'll bite. Oh! You idiots thought we are going to keep paying $60 and not be able to loan it out to a friend or turn it at Game Stop? That's very different, that is just a big old price increase heading into a recession. Brilliant move guys!

Re:Killing used/rental

[Neoprofin]

And not to worry, if someone can't rent or borrow they'll just pirate, then the manufacture gets all the money they're entitled... wait.

Re:Killing used/rental

[ZephyrXero]

Exactly. If the game industry wants to kill off the used game market...and piracy for the most part too...in one fell swoop, all they need to do is lower the average game's price to around $20-30. If I can get a brand new copy of a game for $20, no way in hell I'm gonna pay Game Stop $15 for a used copy. It's simple economics really...

Not only that, but if the industry really truely wants to make gaming a mass market affair, they are going to have to lower the costs for players. If movies cost $50-60 per title, hardly anyone would buy them either.

Re:Killing used/rental

[Anonymous Coward]

One needs to knobble the first sale issue in its entirety. Rather than selling a $100 DVD, why not ship the DVD in store for $10, but to play it you have to register online for $50 (or perhaps buy a $50 registration card). Considering that we are talking about games that need online connection, this shouldn't be a big deal. That way ownership stays with the game writers, and the 2nd hand market doesn't exist, because who is going to re-sell a $10 DVD?

Re:Killing used/rental

[killmofasta]

Mod parent +1, Interesting.

Actually, its brilliant. Really Brilliant.

Re:Killing used/rental

[Sam1230]

Not only that, but if the industry really truely wants to make gaming a mass market affair, they are going to have to lower the costs for players. If movies cost $50-60 per title, hardly anyone would buy them either.

The counter to that argument is: a good lengthy game can entertain you for 20 hours (100s if you're into online multiplayer). Most movies are 1.5-2 hours long.

Re:Killing used/rental

[ceoyoyo]

In this case, I think that scenario would result in the manufacturer getting EXACTLY as much money as they're entitled to.

Re:Killing used/rental

[QuantumG]

And the counter argument to that is that most gamers don't want a 20 hour title for $50, they want a 2 hour title for $5.

The focus of the gaming industry on the "hard core" is a relic from the days when only geeks had computers.

Re:Killing used/rental

[nEoN nOoDlE]

If the game industry wants to kill off the used game market...and piracy for the most part too...in one fell swoop, all they need to do is lower the average game's price to around $20-30.

That's just a temporary solution. There are games for 20 bucks that aren't flying off the shelves as well as the $60 ones. The best way to stop the used game market and piracy is by not making any games. Which is the direction they're headed if they continue to treat customers as crooks and potential customers as freeloaders.

Re:Killing used/rental

[Fulcrum of Evil]

If movies cost $50-60 per title, hardly anyone would buy them either.

Don't you mean when?

Re:Killing used/rental

[Neoprofin]

The interesting thing to consider is that making a 20 hour game game doesn't cost 10x as much as making a 2 hour game. So, while marketing a two hour title (perhaps something like a shortened version of Resident Evil 2) for $5 is somewhat impractical, one would think there is a point where enough basic framework can be reused that smaller units can be produced for smaller prices.

Studios have been trying this with episodic content, but honestly these shortened units just don't have the depth in shorter units that a movie can because games have to balance narrative along with providing interaction while movies can simply tell their story.

The incredible success of WoW should be proof enough that a game requiring a massive investment in time is not enough to qualify it as "hard core" and that there are plenty of people willing to pay a lot more than $50 to get a good time sink.

Re:Killing used/rental

[Killjoy_NL]

Isn't this what is being done with Episodic gaming like the new Sam & Max series?

Re:Killing used/rental

[Anonymous Coward]

'Irony 101' was offered too early in the morning at your high school, wasn't it?

Re:Killing used/rental

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. If the game industry wants to kill off the used game market...and piracy for the most part too...in one fell swoop, all they need to do is lower the average game's price to around $20-30. If I can get a brand new copy of a game for $20, no way in hell I'm gonna pay Game Stop $15 for a used copy. It's simple economics really...

Let's face it. People will always want it cheaper.

If the average price was $20-30, of course you wouldn't buy second-hand for $15. The market would put it closer to $5.

And you'd be posting to Slashdot saying how happy you are to pay $5, and if new games were $10, you'd never buy second-hand again.

Re:Killing used/rental

[Anonymous Coward]

Um except for the RPGs and some RTS most new games max out in the 6-12 hours of gameplay these. Multiplay excluded.

Re:Killing used/rental

[KDR_11k]

That and the Strong Bad's Cool Game For Attractive People series. Seems only Telltale can handle episodic content though, everyone else manages to make one episode and then take forever to release the next and I don't think anyone except TT has gotten past episode 2 yet.

Re:Killing used/rental

[KDR_11k]

It won't be easy to slim hardcore epic games down to short pieces but there are many gqame designs that can be used to make short games. Also when the game is short the difficulty can be higher since spending more time on each part to master it doesn't result in an insanely long total playtime (who could beat a 40 hour content game if you'd need five hours of play to beat one hour of content?). Seems the cheap, short, hard route isn't very popular with retail purchasers though so it gets pushed into the download services instead and I don't know how sales are on those...

Re:Killing used/rental

[KDR_11k]

But 5$ for a second hand game vs 30$ for a new one would be a massive difference from 60$ for a new game, 55$ for a used one. I think the game industry gets greedy because they're seeing stores make a massive profit (game bought for 20-30$ from the trade in, game sold for 55$ in the store) on the used games. Then again the game industry is so greedy that the stores get almost no profit from new game sales and I guess the industry would love to see it that way for used games too.

Re:Killing used/rental

[Starayo]

That's because those games suck. No price will guarantee great sales for a shitty game.

Re:Killing used/rental

[Aladrin]

I agree. At $20, I'd probably stop renting and just buy every game I wanted. I'd spend more per month, but I'd have a library of games afterwards that I can play with no hassles. I certainly wouldn't be buying used games, not even for $5.

But then, at $20, the profit for GameStop would likely be even closer to nil than it already is. GS makes their money on used games. That means that without them, GameStop wouldn't exist... And it would be that much harder to buy games from a decent store. I absolutely abhor the electronics and games policies of Walmart, KMart, Target, etc. Enough that I just refuse to shop there. Amazon's pre-order system is ass, too. I tried it.

But then, if there's no profit in it, why would Walmart/etc bother selling them, either? It seems to me that it would get ugly quick.

I think the obviously thing to do for the game developers would be to just accept that the market is the way it is and not try to screw over their customers. Gamers are already pissed about the DLC that's actually -on- the disc, but you have to go online and pay for it to access it. If they had to pay extra just to complete the game, they'd blow their lid. I'd certainly never buy from that company again without full reviews, including what's needed to complete the game. At that point, the game has lost so much of its mystery that I probably wouldn't be interested anyhow.

Re:Killing used/rental

[Anonymous Coward]

Ironically, the "Irony 101" class at your high school apparently taught something that wasn't actually irony.

Re:Killing used/rental

[tepples]

If movies cost $50-60 per title, hardly anyone would buy them either.

If video games could be completed in 2 hours on the first try, hardly anyone would buy them either.

Re:Killing used/rental

[trdrstv]

Ok, they want to kill of rental and used games. Fine. Doesn't matter to me.... but the value of games as a bought item like a DVD or book is a lot higher to me than a non-tranferrable license. Price accordingly and I'll bite. Oh! You idiots thought we are going to keep paying $60 and not be able to loan it out to a friend or turn it at Game Stop? That's very different, that is just a big old price increase heading into a recession. Brilliant move guys!

You bring up an Excellent point. I for one have about 30 Virtual console games on the Wii. I think the price is fair for the value is worth it ($10 for Mega Man 9, $8 for Super Metroid? Sure... I'll bite), but everything's $10 or less. I don't mind that it's a license and not resellable and I can't loan it out to people, but the very nature of it is SUBTRACTING value, so you have to price it accordingly.

If they think I'd do the same for Full retail games, then they have a much higher bar to cross to get my perceived value from it.

Re:Killing used/rental

[nEoN nOoDlE]

Braid is 15 bucks and hasn't sold as well as Gears of War. Penny Arcade Adventures is also 15 bucks and hasn't sold as well either and both of those are great games. There's a ton of puzzle games that are 10 bucks that give hundreds of hours of replay value and aren't selling as well as AAA titles. The problem is people want Gears of War for 15 bucks, but games like that cost millions to make. Games will always be inherently less appealing than movies because games can't put you in a big theater for 2 hours. Games require a large investment of time and money, since you need to have the hardware to run the game, even if the game was 15 bucks. Pricing them the same as movies is not feasible. Also, in terms of value, games give you an average of 30 hours of entertainment for 60 bucks. This is $2/hour in comparison to movies which are $10/hour, but people still complain that games don't have the replay value or are too short.

Re:Killing used/rental

[Starayo]

Braid doesn't sell as well because people are shallow or haven't heard of it, and the Penny Arcade adventures, while of course fun, do not have very much replay value. The main problem, though, is people who aren't familiar with Penny Arcade are unlikely to buy it. I still felt happy with my purchase of the Penny Arcade games.

As for most puzzle games, what may be replay value to you is tedious to another. The majority of puzzle games I see are pretty bad, and the gems in the rough suffer less sales due to the reaction of a consumer used to lesser fare: "A puzzle game? Urgh."

As for price: I am Australian. New games cost me, within my country, AUD$100 or more! It's cheaper to import, though with the exchange rate as it is, not as cheap anymore, when our dollar was nearing parity with the US Dollar it was almost half price to buy outside the country! The cost of nearly anything technologically-related in this country disgusts me.

I would be happy to pay around AUD$75-ish for a new game, unless it was total crap, which many are turning out to be nowadays. Crysis was fun but wasn't worth the $99 I paid for it, Assassin's Creed was again fun but tedious after the first few hours of play and worth nowhere near the $99 I paid for it. Spore was fun, but again not worth the money. Gears of War, which I bought used (seeing as I can't find a new copy anywhere for a price that won't break the bank) was worth twice the $35 I paid for it, and I have enjoyed what I have played of it immensely. Fable II has been an excellent purchase, and I would have been happy to have paid more than the $75 I got it for, buying from India, although that would mean I wouldn't be playing it at all because alas, I am a student, and have no money for such frivolities.

For the price of the average new game, I can go and see 50 movies (ok, ok, because my friend works for the cinema), and yet they expect me to pay so much for something that will almost certainly turn out to be over-hyped garbage. It's amazing people buy games in this country at all since we're paying much more than the US for petrol, and practically everything else too!

That would be like getting people to pay for sex

[Anonymous Coward]

Never gonna happen

Doctrine of first sale

[MikeBabcock]

Doctrine of first sale still applies to other properties that can be purchased and re-sold, despite the fact that authors make no money off sales of used books, nor Ford off sales of used cars and trucks.

Its like the music industries attitude problem has somehow infiltrated the thinking of other digital organizations worldwide.

Harry Potter will have had way more readers than it had sales (probably more than twice as many) before accounting for privacy at all.

"Get over it" comes to mind.

Re:Doctrine of first sale

[narcberry]

Sure it's lame, but I don't think this applies. You buy a product with an included key that can be consumed once. You can turn around and sell this product to a game store or friend, but if you consume the key, the product is nearly valueless.

It's synonymous with food, well rotten food anyway.

Re:Doctrine of first sale

[Timothy Brownawell]

You can turn around and sell this product to a game store or friend, but if you consume the key, the product is nearly valueless.

Keys don't get "consumed" naturally the way food does. It's an unnatural engineered-in limitation, which I would expect people to be seriously pissed off about if they weren't clearly informed prior to paying for it.

Re:Doctrine of first sale

[maglor_83]

It's an unnatural engineered-in limitation, which I would expect people to be seriously pissed off about if they weren't clearly informed prior to paying for it.

Look at Spore. People are seriously pissed off even when they are clearly informed prior to paying for it. And rightly so, too.

Re:Doctrine of first sale

[Doctor_Jest]

The key here is "guaranteed profit" Or "guaranteed revenue". Epic thinks that because they make a game, they should be able to tell you that you can't sell it, rent it, loan it to a friend, etc. Garth Brooks said the same thing about used CD's... and look where that got used CD sales... oh.. that's right it didn't affect them. :)

Rant all you want, Epic. You think you are "losing" sales to the used market now... wait until you cut it off...

I don't see GM bitching that the 1989 GMC I sold last year is cutting into their profits... or used car sales in general. (Granted, under the current climate, they might latch onto that. heh.) But the point stands... If game companies think retailers are making a killing off used sales, find a way to make new sales more enticing... restricting content is NOT the answer... swag... maps, incidentals.. keychains... whathaveyou. Vinegar isn't the answer.

Re:Doctrine of first sale

[killmofasta]

"nor Ford off sales of used cars and trucks."

Not! Ford continues to make a *LOT* of money, from parts and service.

Re:Doctrine of first sale

[Destoo]

books do not have a recurring support cost. Games do.
If you buy a game, download a 100megs add-on or patch, play online with the provided matching service, call to bitch about your newest SLI rig not getting you the right amount of FPS, all stuff you're entitled to when you have a valid copy of the game, the publisher/developper pays.
If you're missing a page to your Harry Potter book, I doubt JKR's wallet will be affected. Same with a music CD.

The application of first sale is a bitch. Plus international boundaries. And EULAs.

Re:Doctrine of first sale

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that Ford dÃes make money off used cars by selling parts needed for maintenance.

Re:Doctrine of first sale

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, let's remove copyright for anything "spoiled" intentionally by content producers. (For after the once-only key is used that is)

Copyright was intended to enrich the public domain. Making it so that it becomes obsolete intentionally, and very quickly, looks like an obvious attack on the purpose of copyright, using copyright itself to facilitate the attack. Kind of like a dog eating it's own leg.

Re:Doctrine of first sale

[realisticradical]

I'm slowly working through the Doctrine of First Sale article and it looks like all but 2 federal districts are pretty clear on the fact that there's no such thing as a non-transferable software license. California courts even seem to suggest that if you buy bundled software you're allowed to unbundle and sell the parts individually, perhaps provided you never actually loaded them. The position of the courts seems to be that software is essentially the same as books and movies, if you buy a copy you're allowed to sell it provided you don't keep any copies for yourself.

Re:Doctrine of first sale

[Anonymous Coward]

If they need payment for continuing online support, they can charge separately for the continuing online support (see: Xbox Live, MMO subscriptions).

Re:Doctrine of first sale

[MikeBabcock]

Indeed, this is very clear in most places that I've looked (here in Canada too). Software developers have forgotten they're selling a product and think they're selling licenses. Courts disagree, and Microsoft still tries to bully you into not selling your copy of Windows on EBay.

Re:Doctrine of first sale

[MikeBabcock]

As an AC responded already, if they have recurring costs, they should be passing these along to the consumer or requiring unique keys to access them.

I can sell my copy of Neverwinter Nights, but if I continue to use the CD keys while someone else does, they're disabled and I lose online access in the game.

You want to transfer rights, you stop using the keys, no additional costs, very simple.

Re:Doctrine of first sale

[MikeBabcock]

Just wait, and we'll get games that are as buggy as a Ford truck and they'll start charging me the value of a virtual 'transmission' to get my patch updates.

Book Publishers

[fractalVisionz]

I don't hear book publisher charging the price of a book to read the last chapter if I buy it used, why should games be the same way.

Just the same, we live in a free economy, the consumers and customers will speak as a collective whole, most likely by not buying the worse than DRM laden games.

Finally, I haven't come up with a good name yet for this, anyone have any thoughts?

Re:Book Publishers

[Iamthecheese]

"competition." If any of you slashdotters feel like starting up a game company this is a great time: Many Americans will be looking for something fun to do with their welfare checks-cum-tax rebates. Furthermore there are many coders willing to work for cheap in America and a public royally pissed off at the greed and mediocrity in the game business.

Re:Book Publishers

[Anonymous Coward]

Not yet, but they're trying. There are already textbooks that come with single-use online codes that make them worthless as used if the class requires the online portion, and the book publishers are salivating over the possibility of licensing books the way that software is licensed.

Boring games

[mrfriendly]

"way more than twice as many people played Gears than bought it" I played Gears without buying - for about 30 seconds before I got bored. Good thing I didn't spend 50 bucks - sheesh

Re:Boring games

[ZephyrXero]

Yeah, I do that all the time. I've played 100's of games over at my friends' houses over the past few years and within half an hour, I've more than gotten my fill. For every game I've found fun enough to warrant a purchase (as well as investing the time to play them) there are hundreds that I was more than happy to skip. Poor quality, plus over inflated price equals you don't get my money.

For example: Thank god I didn't buy Spore! What a dissapointment... I was so excited for that game over the past 3 years, but then this guy had to ruin it. Not even beginning to mention the draconian DRM.

Sounds Retarded

[bshankle]

What's next? I buy a used car and have to pay the maker a fee to get my own set of keys?

Re:Sounds Retarded

[Iamthecheese]

Coming soon to a used car dealer near you: Firmware updates for your used car! This special piece of software will allow reconfiguration of the seats beyond the first 100 times the position is set, recognition of the 8th-16th set of tires, trouble-free oil changes past 200,000 miles, and you can even wipe the GPS reporting settings! only $3000 plus tax, consult your nearest dealer for details.

Small Monthly Fees

[Anonymous Coward]

I would like to see all games go on a subscription service.

Ultimately, this would be a good thing for the consumer.

When you are finished with the game, there is no need to continue the subscription.

I would like to see games use the same "contract" model like cellphones. Pay a low monthly fee, and get access to the game.

Want early out of the contract? you can sell it to somebody else, or pay a small early termination fee.

It's good for the industry , and good for the consumer, everybody wins!

Operating systems and applications should also use this model. Why purchase a console or a PC, when you can lease it for a small monthly fee.

Same goes for storage. Why bother with the hassle? let someone else take care of it, for a small monthly fee.

Re:Small Monthly Fees

[the_B0fh]

Won't work. I still play starcraft and broodwar. I'm definitely not interested in paying more to play it. For your scheme to work, the subscription price needs to be small enough to entice me to continue to pay. At that level, the publishers aren't interested. What they are interested is the $15 or whatever people continue to pay for World of Warcraft. What they don't understand is that there's only *one* microsoft, *one* world of warcraft.

Re:Small Monthly Fees

[Pinckney]

No, god no. I don't frankly care if it reduces my costs overall. I'm fed up with this contract culture, where anything worth doing requires agreeing to terms that frankly, nobody understands. I want to have some control -- not to be bound to a million different obnoxious companies. Look at all the nightmares when people try to unsubscribe to AOL, for example. Now multiply it a hundredfold.

Re:Small Monthly Fees

[Renraku]

Don't feed the trolls.

Pretty much everyone is against the 'small monthly fee' mindset.

Re:Small Monthly Fees

[nabsltd]

If the monthly fee were truly small (say $10), and the content worthwhile, I'd be happy to pay.

But, I suspect that my definition of "worthwhile" wouldn't make the game companies very happy. I'd want the ability to play to every game they had ever made (within reason...say less than 10 years old) for that $10/month.

Basically, since the average game company puts out at most 2 good games a year, then it's still $60/game I would have purchased anyway, but I'd also have the ability to at least play around with the other games, and maybe some of them would be worth a few bucks, even if I wouldn't ever have thought about buying the game as a standalone.

Re:Small Monthly Fees

[Renraku]

I'd pay $10 to access a metric assload of older games, too. Provided they were updated to run on current machines.

Know what I wouldn't pay for?

"Here's your racing game. Its all shiny and new! Hey, all of those cars online are beating you :( Better buy that car so you can compete!"

or

"Here's your war game. Better buy that explodorifle so you can kill those tanks. Because everyone has one, they paid for theirs fair and square."

Gunbound is the perfect example. You can pay and get a pretty decent advantage. I avoid Gunbound because of that and the cheats.

Re:Small Monthly Fees

[carlzum]

Sorry, modded your post redundant instead of insightful by accident. I agree, if game publishers want to distribute their product like a premium cable channel, I'm OK with that. You get a few good originals, some duds, and a selection of older stuff with your subscription. Just don't ask me to buy the game and pay monthly.

Re:Small Monthly Fees

[Anonymous Coward]

ein Führer!

Re:Small Monthly Fees

[N1AK]

I am afraid I just don't see the need for the subscription model in computer games.
I like having ownership of games I buy, and as game purchases are not sufficiently cheap as to be trivial in nature I am happy evaluating the value of them prior to purchase. Subscription based systems have a number of costs.
Losing access to a game because your vendor stops renting it, the lack of competition due to taking retailers out of the picture and the fact that almost all subscription based markets end up polarised around a few players all put me off. A subscription model could lead to a situation where you pay EA $20 a month for access to their catalogue of games, but need to pay $10 more to get access to premium content or $5 for the retro pack.

Want to play WoW? Well thats another $25 a month for the Blizzard subscription with Diablo, WoW and Starcraft 2. And Call of Duty 4? Well your in luck Activison only charge $15 a month for their pack. So for just $75 a month you have access to all the games in the world, which is great except you only really wanted 3 of them and haven't got time to play them all anyhow.

Re:Small Monthly Fees

[kohaku]

It's not only a matter of control: What about casual gamers? I finished Red Alert 3 in four days (parents basement, etc. ;)), so I would only have to pay a month's worth of subscription, but what about those who only play games occasionally, or maybe aren't particularly good at games? When the amount you pay is directly proportional to how good you are, and how much you play, I think they'll end up losing a fair amount of business from first-time and casual gamers. Anyway, I like having copies of my old games to play a few years down the line; with a subscription model, if the publisher goes out of business I might never see my favorite game of old again.

Re:Small Monthly Fees

[akadruid]

What they don't understand is that there's only *one* microsoft, *one* world of warcraft.

Course, once upon a time, there was only *one* everquest

Re:Small Monthly Fees

[sorak]

I'm tired of the nickel and diming. I pay around $40 a month for internet, than, if I want an X-Box 360, then I pay an X-box live subscription fee, and then, if I play an MMORPG, I pay a monthly fee on top of that.

Whatever happened to the days when you buy a system, a game, a dvr/vcr, and you didn't have to pay "rent" on every electronic item in your house.

Yarr harr fiddledy dee...

[NoobixCube]

PC gamers will have an obvious way around this. More and more reasonable people are being pushed to pirating games they want; nobody wants SecuROM, or Starforce foisted on them, and nobody will stand for being told they have to pay more just to see the end of a game. Sooner or later, games will be losing more and more key content to the optional extra market.

"Oh, sorry, you only bought the game. You can play the training level as much as you want, but all the levels are extras. Yeah, if you buy the levels, be prepared to see some textureless soldiers running around. Those textures are extras." That sadly doesn't seem far fetched...

Re:Yarr harr fiddledy dee...

[narcberry]

This move is evidence of poor competition in the marketplace. If the market were truly competitive, decisions would be in favor of lowering prices and enticing users.

Re:Yarr harr fiddledy dee...

[ZephyrXero]

Reminds me of that new Gran Turismo with only one car...

Re:Yarr harr fiddledy dee...

[PitaBred]

Welcome to copyright law being way behind where technology is.

trade ins

[Anonymous Coward]

What game publishers don't understand: All those people that trade in games at Gamestop? Do you know what they use the store credit for? *New Games* If you kill the secondary market, all you will do is take money from the primary market, with the result of a poorer games industry. Is that what you want?

Re:trade ins

[geminidomino]

What game publishers don't understand: All those people that trade in games at Gamestop? Do you know what they use the store credit for? *New Games* If you kill the secondary market, all you will do is take money from the primary market, with the result of a poorer games industry. Is that what you want?

But those "NEW GAMES" might come from *GASP* Their *competitors*!

"Scorched earth" is a common policy for corporates these days.

Re:trade ins

[Tubal-Cain]

"Scorched earth" is a common policy for corporates these days.

Scorched Earth... good game.

Re:trade ins

[Neoprofin]

Excellent game. Nothing like setting the wind too high or adding some rubber walls and watching everyone simply try to escape the devastation of their own weapons.

It's a striking metaphor.

Umm...

[Spy der Mann]

"We don't make any money when someone rents it, and we don't make any money when someone buys it used".

Welcome to the real world! Want to be rich? Keep working!

Re:Umm...

[auLucifer]

"We don't make any money when someone rents it, and we don't make any money when someone buys it used".

I find this to be an odd statement. I always thought that rental games were like rental movies where the store pays a substantially larger sum to the distributor the right to rent out the product. So if this is the case, wouldn't they have already made more money of non-buyers then none at all?

Re:Umm...

[Neoprofin]

Yes but they don't make money on each and every rental in addition to the money they were paid for the rental copy in the first place and the money they're paid when someone decides they want to own it.

If they can't get you coming, going, and everywhere in between there's still work to be done.

Re:Umm...

[daver00]

Where do they get this idea from anyway? If somebody is renting it out, then Epic made money off the sale of the game. If somebody buys it second hand, again they made money off the sale of the game.

I see your point but I don't see theirs, they did make their money, they made exactly what they wanted when they set the asking price!

Developers vs developers

[antic]

"I've talked to some developers who are saying 'If you want to fight the final boss you go online and pay USD 20, but if you bought the retail version you got it for free.'"

Surely they mean they've talked to marketing/admin at a games development company? Which in-the-trenches developer, likely a gamer themselves, would want their games to play out like that?

Make a good game. Sell it. If the replay value is high enough, people will keep it rather than selling or renting it. Same if you provide legitimate, on-going DLC (whether free or paid). Engineer some stupid scenario whereby you drag more money out of people for the hell of it and you'll miss sales.

Re:Developers vs developers

[Ihmhi]

The last game I bought with my own money is GTA: San Andreas. I've probably spent upwards of 300 hours playing that game, and I could spend 300 more just for all the fun stuff you can do in it.

Diablo II is another one. I've got over a thousand hours in that one, and I still go back to it. If you design a game well, the players will buy it. This is just publishers trying to compensate for their glaring inadequacies.

Re:Developers vs developers

[ET3D]

I agree. Developers would never say such a thing. It's like writers saying "I don't want my book to be in libraries." Developers just want the publisher to pay for the development. It's the publisher who wants to maximise profits.

IMO DLC of this sort will be fine if it cost $20 to fight the big boss regardless of how you got the game.

DLC as DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

Behold the future of gaming: using DLC as a form of DRM.

Re:DLC as DRM

[Khyber]

It's already been done. The download version of STALKER: SoC is 100% incompatible with the physical disc version as of the latest update to patch 1.0006. The reason? The download version of STALKER can only patch up to 1.0005 because of issues with the DRM between download version and DVD version.

I paid for multiplayer and was screwed before I even knew it.

Re:DLC as DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

It's true and, in a way, they should embrace this. Give the original purchaser a bonus and have it available, for a price, for the second owner. Come out with periodic updates/extras/bonuses for your games. Honestly, if more developers spent more time creating games that people were excited about playing rather than just shoveling games out (take Bethesda and Blizzard for example), the games will have the longevity to do just that. And, of course, once the core game is built, these addons should be simple to make.

I'm not for nickle and diming the consumer, and I understand the fear of having companies release uncomplete games only to charge for addons to make it comeplete at a later date, but it's definitely better than the approach that's currently being taken.

Right of first sale

[syousef]

We don't make any money when someone rents it, and we don't make any money when someone buys it used -- way more than twice as many people played Gears than bought it."

So what? A car manufacturer doesn't make money when a second hand car is sold. An actor doesn't get more money when a movie is rented.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine

This fiction that every time a product is used, the people who made said product deserve to be compensated just shows up how greedy these people are. It's never worked this way before, and if you take this position and have ever bought anything second hand you're a hypocrite. Get a clue.

Re:Right of first sale

[Artifakt]

Actually a car manufacturer makes extra money before the second hand car is sold. The first owner pays a price that includes an extra portion for how much that owner can make back by reselling the car in a few years. Take away used sales, and new sale prices drop. Same for the game manufacturer. So what this pig is complaining about is he only gets to make his money a few months faster on average, than the guy he sold it to gets to make some back. Now you know why American style capitalism doesn't work, whether the theoretical libertarian version would or not - Our 'visionary, self-made captains of industry' are actually 'whining, embittered, envious little losers'.

Re:Right of first sale

[Zencyde]

Or perhaps it's the other way around. Perhaps people are only willing to pay a percentage of what the car cost new? Perspective is a crazy thing, isn't it?

On the note of comparing cars to video games... that's absurd. The amount of money it costs to develop a car per car is great. The amount of money it costs to actually build each car is much greater. For video games, it's almost entirely development costs, save advertising and what-not. They could already lower their prices and still rake in huge profits. Car companies have tighter margins. That's the difference.

Re:Right of first sale

[Qzukk]

My sister is the only person I knew who chose "resale value" as the top criteria for buying a car. She hates the car, but at least she can sell it for more than a tenth of its value.

For the resale value to actually figure into the price of the new car, people like my sister have to be common, and I don't see that happening. In other words, when looking to buy a car, I expect people are going to say "this one doesn't have enough cupholders" or "this one doesn't have the zip I want", not "gee, I don't think I'll be able to resell this car".

Re:Right of first sale

[Artifakt]

Right of First sale applies to everything that is normally for sale - a car, a game, a plot of land, an iron lung, a kaleidoscope, a book, a piece of military grade ordnance, a packet of seeds, a factory, a soda pop, The fact that first sale prices are affected by resale values also applies to everything that can be resold. So how much profit margin a given industry enjoys, or what the costs of production are, these things are irrelevant.
      It's simply a fact - some people who buy a videogame think, 'I can sell that back in a few months and get part of my money back", and that enters into what those people think is a fair price. It's a frellin fact. It's an absolute truth fnord-dammit!!!!! What the game maker got at first sale was already affected by some buyers' plans to resell the item and get part of their costs back. I shouldn't have to debate that fact. Maybe we should be discussing what the law should be, in light of that fact. Maybe we should be discussing just how significant the fact is as it affects the game makers overall sales. But unless you want to make a blanket claim that nobody ever resells anything they bought, I shouldn't be having to argue that fact.
      Here, I'm starting a factory to make left handed Creeftons in my basement. You have to sign a contract saying you won't resell one, because.., uh because.... Oh yeah, because they are not cars! Never mind that they are pretty damned similar to something else covered by first sale doctrine, it shouldn't protect you here, because they aren't similar to cars. Oh, and in this one respect, they are in fact exactly like cars, because they too can be resold, but never mind that. I'm sure there's a reason why I should get special treatment.

Ok...

[Anonymous Coward]

'If you want to fight the final boss you go online and pay USD 20, but if you bought the retail version you got it for free.'

Good luck with that. Rest assured, developers, that the pirated version will be bundled with whatever "DLC" you are trying to charge for.

And that problem isn't just limited to the PC anymore. Plenty of people have mod-chipped consoles.

Something for Nothing

[madcat2c]

Its amazing to me that one decision could destroy your company and alienate your customers in one fell swoop.

Rather than build great game after great game and make money, they would rather stifle development of new games. BUT they want to keep the same level of income (or higher) for much less work.

Dear greedy assholes,

[Caboosian]

Stop trying so desperately hard to dissuade me from giving you money. I love my hobby, but you are making it so damn hard for me to buy your games. If you keep pissing all over the idea of a "finished product", I'm eventually gonna have to find a new hobby. This shit has to stop.

Love,

A lifelong gamer

WTF? Seriously.

[BrianRoach]

Perhaps if enough people aren't willing to purchase your game at full retail, your retail price is too high for the product you are selling?

There's a reason GameStop, etc are basically pawn shops these days - they figured out that there's a whole lot more people willing to buy the games at roughly 30% off retail.

But no, your answer is to try and kill secondary sales.

I honestly hope you do, in some ways, as then you'll see that your logic is equally as flawed as the RIAA's and that each "secondary sale" or rental isn't someone who would have purchased it at full retail otherwise.

Re:WTF? Seriously.

[geminidomino]

30% off? Lolwut?

Per Gamestop.com:

Fallout 3 (New): 59.99
Fallout 3 (Used): 54.99

Expect to save $5 to $7 (paying 89-92%) on used games these days, and only get 10-30% trade-in (high end only if EVERYONE wants the game, and then expect to pay 95-97%

I don't think "New prices are too high" is really the deciding factor here...

Re:WTF? Seriously.

[Walpurgiss]

Op must mean 30% off retail 12-18 months later.

I guess if you wait a year and a half, you could pay 30-50% less; but of course, by then retail will have shrunk by about the same amount the used price did.
It takes too long for the price to drop enough for a game I want to play to come out; buying used really only helps when you can get an additional discount on used, or are getting an older game.

Re:WTF? Seriously.

[geminidomino]

I only find buying used to be worthwhile if the game is "older" enough to be not in stock new. Otherwise, you save even less ("Greatest Hits"/"Platinum Collection"/etc... games tend to go for 19.99 retail, and GS will sell them about 17.99 used, and pay $3 or less for turnins).

Re:WTF? Seriously.

[rwillard]

Uh.

Used games doesn't usually include games that were sold in the last few weeks.

Wait a few months and that price will plummet.

Re:WTF? Seriously.

[geminidomino]

In direct relation to the price of the retail game plummeting. It's rare to see a game where New - Used >= $10

Re:WTF? Seriously.

[Walpurgiss]

This is true, most of my PS2 games were 7.99-14.99 since they weren't the really popular games and I was able to wait like 2 years to try them.

Counter example though, ChronoTrigger for SNES is probably unfindable in stores, but last time I did see it, maybe 9 or 10 years ago, it was more than retail to buy; like $74.99.
That is a very rare occurrence though, Very few games nowadays could get like that, especially since discs are so cheap to press compared to cartridges that the greatest hits thing exists.

Sidenote; Chrono Trigger coming to DS this month will be a most excellent occurrence.

Re:WTF? Seriously.

[Khyber]

No, OP refers to those at GameStop that have the EDGE Card and get even DEEPER discounts on used games instead of the used sticker price.

Fallout 3, used, 35.99 USD in SoCal

Re:WTF? Seriously.

[rsmith-mac]

Bingo. The price is irrelevant as far as the consumer is concerned. The prices could be $100/$95 or $10/$9; it makes no sense - and in fact it's counter to their own best interests - for the consumer to buy a new copy of a game. The used copy is equally as good (a perfect substitute) and is cheaper, the consumer will buy it. Gamestop figured out that instead of pocketing a small share of 50%, they could pocket virtually the entire share of $45 by undercutting the producer of the game.

This is applicable to any other media too. If Walmart started selling used DVDs the way Gamestop sells games, they'd be able to pull off the exact same thing.

Re:WTF? Seriously.

[geminidomino]

The prices could be $100/$95 or $10/$9; it makes no sense - and in fact it's counter to their own best interests - for the consumer to buy a new copy of a game. The used copy is equally as good (a perfect substitute) and is cheaper, the consumer will buy it.

I have to disagree with you there. I generally find that the raped manuals, variable-condition discs, and the fact that gamestop employees and even managers are too stupid to read their own receipts wrt their return policies on used games, it's not worth it to save 4 bucks.

Re:WTF? Seriously.

[Walpurgiss]

So your EDGE card got you 40% off used sticker price? I think mine only says 10% off used games. Did you trade something in at the same time and just not mention it?

Re:WTF? Seriously.

[Khyber]

No, being a Game Informer subscriber when you apply for the edge card gives you the deeper discount. Did you get the magazine subscription?

Another Flaw

[therpham]

Okay, so people that want the content and have to pay for it are pissed. But what about your customers that don't have Internet access on their console? They're double-screwed even if they bought the game new.

Oh btw

[dmhorus]

Cliffy b sucks.

I was under the impression

[sleeponthemic]

That movie studios make money from rental dvds. Why is it different for games? It shouldn't be.

Re:I was under the impression

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Your incorrect - movie studios don't make money from rental DVDs.

http://www.entmerch.org/positions.html#FirstSale

Re:I was under the impression

[sleeponthemic]

Replying to clarify: Isn't it true that rental dvds sold to hire stores are more expensive than regular dvd versions of movies?

(I don't believe they get a per-unit-rented dividend)

Re:I was under the impression

[sleeponthemic]

As I said in my clarification which I'm sure you would not have seen yet, I believe it is true that rental dvds are sold for a much higher initial value than regular consumer prices. I'm not suggesting that is equivalent, though. I'm just saying, I don't believe it is true that they get no money for rentals. However small, they receive some money.

I don't know whether this is true for games, though.

Re:I was under the impression

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Grandparent is actually correct: As you note, first sale applies. However, there is nothing stopping you from making some other agreement. In the case of movie rentals, the peculiar economics of movie production often makes this a preferable arrangement.

If you are a rental place, buying movies at retail makes it very expensive to build up a large collection, particularly obscure stuff that will take ages to recoup the initial investment, or the bursty demand for new, popular, releases. Instead, you can establish a revenue sharing agreement with the studio, who will furnish you with as many copies of a given title as you need at the cost of pressing, which is trivial, and then share the revenue from each rental.

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118972449/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0
http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=16851899
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=258

Re:I was under the impression

[Hawke666]

As far as I know, that is no longer the case.

Ponderponder... why'd I sell a game...

[Opportunist]

Let's see, why would I sell a game... Hmm... Would I sell Civilisation II? Nah, I might want to play it again. Would I sell Alpha Centauri? Are you nuts, that game can still be a blast (provided you find a machine able to run it)! I also couldn't see myself selling my copy of Supreme Commander.

If you don't want your players to buy their games used, give your gamers a reason NOT TO SELL THEM. Simple as that. You can only buy used what others offer you. Replay value is what you're looking for. Of course, if you offer games that can be done in less than 10 hours and give the player zero incentive to play it again (EA, I'm looking your way!), the temptation to dump the game back onto the market before it loses too much value is quite high. Hey, if I buy it offshore and get it past customs, I might even sell it without a loss!

Re:Ponderponder... why'd I sell a game...

[ozphx]

Exactly... and another tip: Stop selling 5 year old games for the same price as AAA titles. People wouldn't buy their games secondhand if they could get them new for $20!

Re:Ponderponder... why'd I sell a game...

[Opportunist]

Well, it could also help not to sell the same game over and over and just tack a new date onto the title (EA, looking your way again!). When there is Whateverfranchise 2006, Whateverfranchise 2007 and Whateverfranchise 2008, chances are good that people will pick up the one that costs the least, knowing that it's deep inside basically all the same crap.

Re:Ponderponder... why'd I sell a game...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but game manaufacturers don't make money if you sit around playing old games. I imagine it's in their best interest to make games that market well. When you find out they suck, you buy another one. Sure, there are a few real gems out there, but you have to buy 10 games to find 1. Or wait for all the reviews, patches, etc.

Gamers will take it, and LIKE it

[HomerJ]

There's been A LOT of negative stuff with regards to games--mostly on the PC site. DRM, DLC that's promised and never delivered, poor quality. You know something else? None of these seems to have any real effect on sales.

Spore still sold millions of copies. Mass Effect sold well. As much as people SAID "Oh, I'm not buying this DRM crap" or "I hate these buggy games", they are still selling by the millions. Could these titles have sold BETTER if they didn't have all these negative points? Maybe, maybe not.

As soon as you have a major title that comes out, that will have some code like this...people will still buy it. And if publishers can put these kind of restrictions on games, why shouldn't they do it? There's no downside.

As far as piracy, or even renting goes(and when did THAT become evil)..it's limited to people that never really planned on buying it anyways. Those aren't lost sales despite what their studies say. The vast majority of people still still just go to a store and buy it. Good games still sell well. A cry of "OMG PIRACY KILLED OUR SALES" from a publisher is just trying to defend a bad title. Maybe Crysis would have sold better if it actually ran on more than 10% of the PCs sold at the time.

Expect these things to continue. Also expect them to be tolerated by the gaming public. All that crying about SecuROM is going to go away when Mirror's Edge comes out and you HAVE to play it. Having to have some code to get the last level of a game will be cried about on every forum--until Bioshock 2 has one. And it will sell millions of copies.

What can anyone do about it? Nothing. What COULD everyone do? Ignore the game. Don't pirate it. Don't purchase it. Don't talk about it on forums. But that won't happen. Most will happily take whatever the game publisher does to them just so they can have that shiny new version of their favorite game.

Re:Gamers will take it, and LIKE it

[Killer Orca]

And if publishers can put these kind of restrictions on games, why shouldn't they do it? There's no downside.

No downside to them clearly, unless people complain loudly enough to stop bullshit like that in its tracks before it happens.

Re:Gamers will take it, and LIKE it

[nedlohs]

There's a downside.

The fact that a second hand market exists means there are some people who sell there games once they no longer wish to play them.

I suspect 99% of the money they get for selling them to someone else they use to buy another game - in fact they probably just do a trade in deal in the first place...

If they can't sell that old game, because that market collapses with no buyers then they won't be able to buy new games as often. Hence new game sales fall (or prices drop, yeah right that'll ever happen).

Re:Gamers will take it, and LIKE it

[WDot]

Parent is spot on. Remember the Slashdot crowd is very different from the Kotaku/Destructoid/Joystiq crowd. Whereas Slashdotters may boycott to orgasm, many gaming forums are quieter, preferring to grumble a bit before paying anyway. There's some crossover, but ultimately what Slashdot sees as consumer rape is simply a hazard of the hobby for others. There's actually more animosity towards pirates on gaming forums "ruining it for everybody else," rather than the game companies who are instituting the rules.

Re:Gamers will take it, and LIKE it

[renegadesx]

Even that wont help, thats why the class action lawsuits against EA made such pleasent news :)

Re:Gamers will take it, and LIKE it

[Anonymous Coward]

People (like me) didn't know about the terrible path that PC gaming was headed towards until recently. I had no idea SecuROM was on Mass Effect, and I didn't learn about Spore's until after I bought it.

Learning takes time - if gamers are really angry, we'll see a trends sometime.

Re:Gamers will take it, and LIKE it

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course some of us cynics are hoping for the economic crisis to fix it, I don't think they will be able to do their charade when people stop having that much money to spend on such unnecessary things as video games.

Re:Gamers will take it, and LIKE it

[Anonymous Coward]

What can anyone do about it? Pirate it.

Fixed that for you.

Re:Gamers will take it, and LIKE it

[DeadboltX]

I don't tend to buy video games often, mostly because I don't play video games often anymore. I was stoked about SPORE and followed it for a while and was going to buy it the day it came out, until I heard about the DRM it was going to have. The result? I said "Fuck you EA" and did not buy it, did not pirate it, and did not talk about it unless it was to bitch about how shitty the DRM on it was and how that was the sole factor in my decision to not buy or play the game.

Re:Gamers will take it, and LIKE it

[illumin8]

As far as piracy, or even renting goes(and when did THAT become evil)..it's limited to people that never really planned on buying it anyways. Those aren't lost sales despite what their studies say. The vast majority of people still still just go to a store and buy it. Good games still sell well.

Not true. I have enough money to buy 2-3 games a month brand new if I wanted to, but I decided to pirate Spore because I didn't want to deal with SecuROM. When Gears of War 2 comes out for PC, I'll probably do the same thing. If they're going to treat their paying customers like criminals then they just might find out how well that works out for you.

Civil disobedience is the only way to teach these gaming companies that DRM is not ok. They are violating the first sale doctrine and they need to be smacked down.

Re:Gamers will take it, and LIKE it

[steelfood]

What can anyone do about it?

Pirate the game. It might not be legal, but is there a more practical course of action?

Re:Gamers will take it, and LIKE it

[Krakhan]

or even renting goes(and when did THAT become evil)..

Nintendo tried pulling this bullshit stunt by suing Blockbuster and other video rental stores for it in the 80s. Essentially their argument was "People will just rent games instead of buying them!!!", i.e. what's being said now. Thankfully they lost that court case, so they and other game manufacturers have had to live with that since.

Re:Gamers will take it, and LIKE it

[_2Karl]

Ignore the game. Don't pirate it. Don't purchase it. Don't talk about it on forums.

Hear hear!if you STILL go out and play the game you have NO RIGHT to complain. No video game is going to change your life. You've lived up to this point without it, you can live the rest of it quite happily.

more money more problems!

[Wolfmandan72]

People and companies are getting more money greedy by the year! I mean come on, this is highway robbery for god sake! Its like the government charging us to breath air!

Re:more money more problems!

[Zencyde]

Shhhh! Don't give them any ideas!!!

In addition...

[dmhorus]

I wish these marketing people could see where all this is heading. There is an eventual outcome to all this greed... Eventually when you buy a game, you get one player model, one gun, one song that loops forever one map, one stance on one license. You want to go to the next level? Gotta pay. Wish that hill had some trees on it? It will if you pay. Notice that the buildings in this post-apocalyptic world look like something from super mario world? Pay and they might change the scenery models to something more realistic. Want that gun to get a targeting reticle? $20 please. There are several RTS and FPS games that follow this model and they have been and shall remain garage games specifically for this reason. Nobody will pay to unlock parts of a game they paid for. As if $60 and $80 games arent enough, now you cant even play the complete game without a $20 monthly subscription (even if it is an FPS with offline bots) and hoping to god your computer doesnt die or require a new video card, changing your hardware setup and voiding your license? Its greed in one of its purest forms. Game companies need to get a grip and realize they cant turn into the RIAA just to make their fiscal sales goals and expect everyone to wet themselves whenever they release another EULA contract disguised as a game. Ill be using Epic's game disks as coasters from here on out thanks.

Nintendo, MPAA, not new...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is nothing new. Nintendo was very anti-used market back in the 90's and maybe even earlier.

The music industry has tried to fight the used market too.

What is next? Movie studios will try to come up with a system where if you have friends over to watch movies, you must charge them each $2 for watching!

Re:Nintendo, MPAA, not new...

[Walpurgiss]

In some situations it may already be illegal to show a movie to a friend. I currently am living on campus at uni and the hall counselor says I can't bring my TV into the lounge and watch a movie with other people living on the floor because of 'copyright issues'

I think that's stupid and possibly bogus, but I guess it could possibly count as public exhibition that those FBI warnings warn about.

Doctrine of first sort.

[Ostracus]

"Doctrine of first sale still applies to other properties that can be purchased and re-sold, despite the fact that authors make no money off sales of used books, nor Ford off sales of used cars and trucks."

It's a little like a bubble sort were the money moves one way and the goods moves the other way.

Re:That would be like getting people to pay for se

[Killer Orca]

I don't know, if you were in the middle of sex and suddenly she stops and refuses to continue unless you pay the "climax fee" of $20, in the heat of the moment you probably would pay.

Dear Lifelong Gamer

[mypalmike]

We only sold 5.3 million copies of Gears of War. At $60 a piece, that's a mere $300 million, give or take, in gross receipts. Our top executives can barely afford the maintenance costs on their exotic Italian sports cars. Please, think of the execs!

Regards,
Greedy Assholes

Re:Dear Lifelong Gamer

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe they have 5,000 game developers earning $30/hr.

$ echo '(60*5300000) / (52 * 40 * 30)' | bc -l
5096.15384615384615384615

Good luck with that.

[Taibhsear]

Feel free to continue shitting on your customers. The rest of us that you drop a load on will just go to a competitor and download the full game.

Possible Scenario

[Orion Blastar]

Kid "Mom, I need your credit card to pay Blizzard $20 so I can defeat the final level boss Cement Head in Worlds of Warcraft Junior: Adolescence Rage"

Mom "What? You need my credit card for what? A video game?"

Kid "I also need $15 more to buy a magic sword +5 against cement."

Mom "But that's extortion, who does Blizzard think they are to charge money to get to the final level and buy a weapon to help you defeat a boss, and what kind of name is Cement Head anyway?"

Kid "But moooooooom, all the kids in Junior High are playing it, and if I don't beat Cement Head, I'll be laughed at lunch by all of my friends because my family is too poor or too stingy to pay for unlocking those parts of the game."

Mom "Well if they laugh at you dear, then they aren't your friends. I am not paying $35 for you to finish some stupid video game."

Kid "But Mom, G4 'Cheat' gave it five out of five stars, the highest rating they can give it."

Mom "I don't care who gave it five stars, I am not giving you my credit card and that is final!"

Re:Possible Scenario

[Yvan256]

I bet $35 that the kid isn't Cartman.

Now give me my money so I go cement that final boss.

Re:Possible Scenario

[Anonymous Coward]

Where are these junior high school students who don't have 3 after school jobs?

Re:Possible Scenario

[Anonymous Coward]

Kid: "Whatever Mom, you're totally uncool."

Kid, moving to next room: "Dad, I need your credit card to pay Blizzard $20 so I can defeat the final level boos Cement Head in Worlds of Warcraft Junior: Adolescence Rage."

Dad: "But that's extortion!"

Kid: "I need the credit card, Dad. I need to fuel my gaming addiction in our basement in order to be popular in the real world! If you give it to me now, I won't accidentally stumble upon your stash of porn videos hidden in the System32 folder while mom is standing over my shoulder."

Dad: "Son, this is worse than extortion. What are you now, 28 years old? You should move out of the basement already!"

"Kid": *uncomprehending stare*

Dad: *fishes credit card out of wallet, hands it over*

Haha: captcha = "families".

Re:Possible Scenario

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not a "Possible Scenario". That's the "Definite Scenario".

Let's look at the first Gears launch...

[Tr3vin]

If I remember correctly, you didn't need to go out and buy the game. In fact, if you didn't buy it at launch, there was little reason to pick it up. Most likely one of your friends had finished it that first evening. It wasn't that they were so into the game, it was just way too short. Why the hell would I buy the game for 50 to 60 bucks when I could just borrow it for a few hours for free. I generally don't sell my games, but I also don't buy games that are going to last me only a few hours with no replay value. Sure, Portal takes a few hours at most to beat, but those few hours were some of the best I've ever had. It was such a fun time, I don't mind experiencing it again.

If they try to pull this unlock code shit, I doubt I will buy anything from them again. It is getting kind of sad because I am quickly running out of game studios that actually make games I enjoy. I don't care how many realistic shades of brown were used. Marketing, hype, and graphics don't make a good game. Sure, they may make a game that sells a lot of copies at launch, but not a good game. Good games require a little bit more effort than that.

I want a GAME that I can ENJOY. You know, with gameplay. That stuff that makes games games and not interactive movies.

Seriously.

[Anonymous Coward]

"BAWWW we want more money for the same product BAWWW you can't transfer that license even if you no longer retain the software BAWWW let's rob value from our products while making it so after purchasing all the DLC the full game costs more than standard shelf price, that'll show those dirty consumers!"

Let's get this out in the open right here, folks:

I WILL NOT PAY FOR A DEMO.

When will these faggots learn that their products aren't really worth that much, are presently -overvalued- in spite of rising development costs, and that there's a big difference between Oblivion horse armor and a crucial part of the game? This DLC garbage is going too far. I'll pay for an expansion pack that adds to an -already complete game-, I'll pay for little trinkets and other additions if they're worth it, but I will not purchase an incomplete game and then pay extra for the ending. That's like paying extra for the last five chapters of a book or the last half hour of a movie, it doesn't fucking work like that.

Cocksuckers that come up with ideas like this are pathetic businessmen grasping for straws. What developers and publishers are doing when they consider selling whole games as piecemeal is subtracting value from each portion and expecting the consumer to pay more for the whole. A good businessperson adds value to a product before asking the customer to ante up instead of taking it away.

Re:Seriously.

[NoobixCube]

Their sexual preferences and oral sex practices have absolutely nothing to do with their greed or incompetence. Unless of course you're talking about them being greedy incompetent lovers.

Re:Seriously.

[Anonymous Coward]

Cliffy doesn't let me get on top, that bastard.

They won't make any money then..

[Anonymous Coward]

If I have to pay to fight a boss or if I cannot buy a game used then oh well.. I will not buy games. How much more will they make then?? ha!

  Some games I've bought used and then liked them so much I bought the sequel new. Elder Scrolls III --> Oblivion for one. So that will not happen in the future.

I am not going to reward this business model. I'll vote against it by never buying games that use this model. I'll play games made by companies that like their customers.

Better keep libraries a secret then

[Kaboom13]

I'm glad these guys aren't in the business of selling books, imagine how ape shit they would go if they learned about these places called libraries, that buy the book once, then lend it out free to whoever wants to read it? Hundreds, even thousands of people getting enjoyment from 1 sale, we better make laws against it fast, or book publishing will be doomed for sure!

Despite all their commercial success, Epic (especially cliffyb) seems determined to find excuses why their games aren't the highest selling entertainment product of all time. The PC version of Gears of War stunk, it had framerate and screen tearing issues, lots of bugs, and little to no effort put into adapting it to PC controls. When the sales stunk, they blamed piracy on the PC. Im sure when GoW 2 comes out, and doesn't outsell Halo, GTA , and Madden combined in the first week, he will blame modchips or paid off/bribed reviewers from Sony or whatever other thing he can come up with to massage his own ego. They owe a lot of their success to Id, who basically created the mold for their early games, but if you listen to them talk you'd think they are god's gift to gamers, bringing them ideas so innovative only truly inspired artists could come up with them, like a first person shooter where you fight aliens with guns, and chainsaws, and chain-saw guns.

Re:Better keep libraries a secret then

[ultracool]

God forbid they ever find out that sometimes multiple people play the same game on the same computer or console. To think that you can go to a friend's house and play while they are busy with something else! Amazing!

Re:Better keep libraries a secret then

[barfy]

Libraries are actually socialized book sales. Most books either sell much fewer copies without library sales, or they sell so many copies that it doesn't matter. WIthout libraries, we have fewer books, because way too many books would not sell enough copies to be printed.

Re:Better keep libraries a secret then

[blackest_k]

Actually Libraries, probably have less effect on book sales than you might initially think.

Library buys a copy then Library user gets the book signed out for 4 weeks (along with a number of others usually). The copy is no longer available for 4 weeks. If someone reserves it. usually there is about a week where it's back in but can't be loaned, before again going out for 4 weeks. So really a popular title would tend to be only available to 12 or 13 people a year per copy and most libraries will not buy more than one copy due to budget restrictions.

so for a new release you might need to wait quite a while before you can get it from a library. Obviously if you don't want to wait you can buy it.

University libraries tend to have short term loans for a week or sometimes for a few hours, or even do not loan the book outside the library at all, but even this will not be effecting book sales that much as demand is high enough to force students to buy if they need that book for an assignment that week.

Libraries probably have more of an effect on the long tail side of sales.

Re:Better keep libraries a secret then

[Madtronik]

I'm glad these guys aren't in the business of selling books, imagine how ape shit they would go if they learned about these places called libraries, that buy the book once, then lend it out free to whoever wants to read it? Hundreds, even thousands of people getting enjoyment from 1 sale, we better make laws against it fast, or book publishing will be doomed for sure!

Well, the European Union already thought about that and already forces its member states to collect royalties from public libraries that go towards shady "author's rights management" associations.

Not everyone that hears a song pays for it

[Dan667]

Geez, get over it already. You cannot possible get everyone to pay every time they play a game. Being nickel and dimed to death has put several companies for other products on the do not buy list. Epic's thinking is a slippery slope to no sales at all.

Why not use advertising?

[edcheevy]

As much as I dislike advertising or product placement in games, it is less distasteful than the proposed idea. Why not look at magazines? Magazines get passed around to people other than the subscriber and they LIKE it because it increases the number of people viewing ads, raising ad prices. Heaven forbid, maybe game developers could profit without bending players over! Or maybe they're just floating this nonsense idea so they can "backpedal" to increasing advertising in games, their real goal in the first place?

no

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd just tell her I was going to a gay bar instead.

OT: Heh

[NotQuiteReal]

Apparently Ford cant make money off the FIRST sale of cars and trucks.

Re:OT: Heh

[Waccoon]

And yet, Toyota and Honda can. I haven't the foggiest clue as to why!

Re:OT: Heh

[Anonymous Coward]

They should become a bank and be able to collect part of the $700 Billion to bail them out. Why not, AMEX did.

We go now to...

[WCLPeter]

... reporter Mike Jones at ACME Construction headquarters where they have just filed an injunction against the National Association of Realtors, ordering them to sell only new homes. John Tightwad, company spokesman had this to say, "The secondary market is a destructive, criminally un-American, invention of the realtors with the sole purpose of eliminating hardworking construction jobs! Every time someone in America buys a used home, they're stealing someone's livelihood!"

Cheese with his whine?

[Just Some Guy]

Four people owned my house before I bought it.

I got my car used.

I buy used books.

I buy used CDs.

I buy used video games.

Your little company doesn't get a free pass from economics just because you feel special, Capps.

Oblig. car analogy

[TrekkieTechie]

This is Slashdot. We need car analogies, not library analogies.

It's as though you bought a used car from your neighbor, but had to buy new ignition keys from the car manufacturer.

seriously so close to the real answer

[SirusTV]

They are so close to the real answer yet so far. The answer is that the copies that get rented out from blockbuster and such should lack some final content. The retail version should have that content. If you rent the game, then decide you like it enough to buy it. your save game should transfer over to your retail copy. Lastly if someone bought the game second hand they really don't care if your company makes more money or not, but to me it says that they didn't like your game enough to keep it and you're doing something wrong or they got the wrong impression when they bought their copy. Screw the rentals not purchases no matter if they are original sales or secondary sales. I know they look the same to your bottom line but there is a difference between logic and evil.

Re:seriously so close to the real answer

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not paying to rent marketing.

Re:That would be like getting people to pay for se

[TrekkieTechie]

I bought my wife a diamond ring, doesn't that count?

Prisoner's Dilemma/Hollywood's Model

[graymocker]

The movie studies have a very useful business model for their rental partners that could be instructive here. Hollywood studios don't sell their DVDs to rental retailers like blockbuster, instead, they have an arrangement whereby they provide the discs and get a cut of the renter's revenues. Blockbuster wins because their inventory management is much simpler. Hollywood wins because they don't have to worry about vastly undercharging on the most frequently-rented discs. The consumer wins because we don't have to listen to movie studios whine about how renters are destroying the music industry. This is actually one thing the RIAA got right, and it's a classic common action problem that huge industry conglomerates are well-equipped to resolve.

As for buying and selling used games, well, who do the publishers think the credit I get from trading in all my games at the local EB is spent on, anyway? A secondary market exists for almost all retail goods, and somehow the market for these goods survives. The reason is that a good's value on the secondary market is priced into it's initial retail price (eg Automobiles with a reputation for low depreciation can sustain a higher retail price). Hopefully there's at least one MBA working for these publishers who can explain this very simple concept to the idiots who seem to think that each transaction on the secondary market represents a lost sale. That said, I'm pessimistic and I do believe that the games industry will move in a more restrictive direction: MBAs can be remarkably stupid, and even if they do grasp this concept, there's a prisoner's dilemma involved - "If only _my_ titles were constrained by DLC/resale lockout mechanisms, then consumers could still trade in my competitors' products in order to buy my product at full retail. On the other hand, if DLC/resale lockout mechanisms become the industry standard, I must implement them to keep up." Once again, a massive industry conglomerate that's on top of its game would actually be useful here, to resolve this common action problem.

Replay value

[coolsnowmen]

Games that have replay value have just that. They have reason for me to keep the game after I've played through it once. Taking action to prevent me from giving away or selling a game after I've played it is wrong.

Make a game that I don't want to give away.
(games I've dusted off in the last 2 years:
    Diablo 2, Baldur's Gate 2, Mario Kart 64, Marvel Vs. Capcom 2, FF7, and doom 3)

Gamers want 3 things

[patio11]

1) Games that cost $50 ~ $100 million to make*
2) Games that cost pocket money
3) Games that only charge you once

And gamers may have any two of these.

* Gears of War was actually fairly cheap, clocking in at a mere twenty million!

Re:Gamers want 3 things

[Jesus_666]

Skip the ultra-fancy graphics and cut back the sound to "merely very good" and things might become a bit cheaper. Focus on game design rather than top-tier voice actors and maybe you get something that more resembles a game and less a movie (also cost-wise).


When I think of the games I like for the story and how it's told, off the hand I come up with Marathon, Escape Velocity Nova and Metal Gear Solid 4. Out of those three games only MGS4 is likely to have a high budget, the other ones are probably somewhere in the five-digit range. And the compelling parts of MGS4 could've been excised and released as a movie and they woud've worked equally well. Marathon and EVN do everythng with simple text boxes and it works, Marathon due to great characterization and EVN because of an actually compelling story. And while Marathon is a Doom-era game EVN is from 2002.

100 million Dollars might make a good game but 100.000 Dollars might do so as well. In a different post someone noted that the industry should stop catering mostly to hardcore gamers with their new offerings - this also applies to presentation. A lot of people don't care whether your game looks like Crysis or "merely" like Half-Life 2. Any money you spend to reach the former over the latter is simply wasted unlike you do explicitly target the people who care. If you want mass-market appeal, making a cheaper game and selling it for a bit less might be a good alternative to spending metric tons of of cash on VFX.

Exactly right. Look where the money is in PCs

[patio11]

Take a look at the sales charts. Here's 2007:

World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade (Blizzard Entertainment) - 2.25 million
World of Warcraft (Blizzard Entertainment) - 914,000
The Sims 2 Seasons Expansion Pack (EA Maxis) - 433,000
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (Infinity Ward) 383,000
Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars (EA Los Angeles) - 343,000
Sim City 4 Deluxe (Maxis) - 284,000
The Sims 2 (Maxis) - 281,000
The Sims 2 Bon Voyage Expansion Pack (Maxis) - 271,000
Age of Empires III (Ensemble Studios) - 259,000
The Sims 2 Pets Expansion Pack (Maxis) - 236,000

Let's see. Either we can be WoW and monetize through recurring billing, which we get 96 cents out of every dollar (as opposed to 25 cents from selling boxes). Or we could crank out casual-friendly $20 expansion packs to sell at WalMart for development budgets in the 6 figures.

Or we could try selling boxes of AAA games. The vast majority of these will fail to hit the megasuccess they need to to recoup our investments as game budgets are getting close to the 9 figures mark. Meanwhile our audience is being corrupted by the expectations set by games like WoW or consoles who can afford budgets of Ungodly Amounts Of Money because their monetization strategy can easily recoup them.

The renters, pirates, and used-game buyers will complain that we charge too much if we sell AAA games, though... On second thought... screw 'em. We sell data, not boxes, and we will control the data.

Slashdot will be pissed off. Screw 'em. They don't pay us anyhow.

Funny but back in the real world...

[patio11]

Go into any game shop which sells PC games. Ask them how to pay for a WoW subscription with cash.

"Buy a WoW card."

Now do it in Asia, which is just America plus 3 years:

"Buy a prepaid virtual currency card which you can use with all your favorite [Steam, etc]-enabled games. Or, alternatively, you can load money onto the pre-paid Visa we sell for just a buck."

"We don't profit from used game sales."

[zigmeister]

They certainly don't directly profit from used game sales, but the studios do benefit from a used game market. Think about it for a minute. People who really leverage the used game market to get what they want a lot of times can't afford too buy new games at $60 a pop. (Like myself, employed and college student.) I may only speak for myself, but I am not a lost sale. If there was no used game market I just wouldn't game, period. I like it but not that much. Thus we "used market gamers" create a way for "new market gamers" to unload their old titles and free up some cash to chase more new titles they otherwise wouldn't have had money for. Just like umm, lemme think here, oh ya, a used market for any other product.

Re:"We don't profit from used game sales."

[Fallingcow]

The PC devs bitch about piracy and such, but as a PC gamer primarily, just about the only games I buy new are PC games.

Oh, I play console games, too, but I buy them used, then trade those for store credit to buy other used games. I can count the number of console titles I've purchased new on one hand, yet I've played probably 50-60 or more since the N64/PSX days.

Pretty soon I'll likely have an X-Box 360 and a PS3. Guess how many games I'll probably buy new for the two systems in the first two years of ownership? Well, seeing as this is much earlier than I usually get in on new consoles, I'll guess a little high and say 4-6, combined.

I spend WAY more money on new PC games. Yes, I still *ahem* creatively acquire some of them, and am not bothered by borrowing from friends or letting them borrow mine, but I *still* buy a higher percentage of them new than I do console games.

I can't imagine I'm the only person like this--"serious" PC gamer but casual console gamer.

Without the used market, I doubt I'd bother with consoles at all. I'd just borrow them a couple years after launch from a friend who didn't mind parting with them for a few weeks, and play the handful of title's I can't go without that way.

It's exactly like that

[caitsith01]

...except here Epic is fucking you.

Re:It's exactly like that

[joocemann]

rate the game you get at face value. if it was worth it, you'll keep it, love what you got and consider paying for more.. no harm no foul.

You just got to know how to rate games now, based on what you get at a basic level; what thats worth to ya.

But here's a point: They are a company, you are a consumer. Make your choice; you know you want GOW2. Don't act like you don't. The choice is clear. Buy good games, if the costs of things bug ya, don't pay em. But if you think the fun is worth it, go for it.

Re:It's exactly like that

[joocemann]

why would you let them fuck you?

don't buy what you don't like.

Re:It's exactly like that

[Perky_Goth]

"GOW" and "good game" in the same paragraph... hmmmm...

Goodbye to the past

[ChaosDiscord]

In 15 years we'll have have two or three more console generations. Microsoft will stop supporting logins for the Xbox 360. Why wouldn't they? It makes them no real new income, it costs them money. They're killing "PlaysForSure" (although it has a temporary reprieve).

So, it's 15 years from now and you want to play Gears of Band IV, and the last 10% of the game is only available as DLC. You have you Xbox Live login information, you backed up the DLC, and you still have the game. Your Xbox 360 died, so you bought a new one. And... you're fucked. You can't authenticate to use use the DLC. Part of gaming history has been lit on fire.

Okay, maybe you don't want to play 15 year old games. That's fine. You probably don't want 60 year old movies either. But people interested in making the great games of the future damn well better be able to replay the old games if you want to move forward. DRM (and DLC is essentially DRM) will destroy our past culture in the name of short term greed. It's pathetic.

Re:Goodbye to the past

[aadvancedGIR]

I sure wouldn't want to watch any 60 year movies, just like I wouldn't want to see any last year movie (I bet the ratio of gem to crap hasn't changed that much), I just want to be able to see any of the good (and you must assume I can have a totally unique definition of "good", so technically, I would need to BE ABLE to see any movie, no matter how crappy or unappealing to me it could be) ones from any period of history (and it's not just a theorical rant, I own many DVDs of films or TV shows that are older than I am, and it's the same for music).

missing quote

[Jabbrwokk]

I don't want to hurt customers who are just trying to play our game [so we are including a tube o' lube in each new box copy.]

TFA missed that part.

Behold the future of gaming discussions:

[caitsith01]

so many acronyms you won't know WTF anyone is talking about even when you RTFA.

Seriously, since when has "DLC" been code for anything? This is almost as annoying as the "SKU" fad which was around for a while.

Memo nerds: we don't all work in the wholesale side of the games retailing industry, nor do we want to learn your 133t industry speak.

Re:Behold the future of gaming discussions:

[Sparton]

so many acronyms you won't know WTF anyone is talking about even when you RTFA.

That's... slightly ironic of you to say.

Re:Behold the future of gaming discussions:

[Aladrin]

Since... Oh, since they've been making it. Every gamer I know knows what DLC is.

Here, I'll help you out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DLC

It's the first one.

Re:Behold the future of gaming discussions:

[caitsith01]

Er.... joke? Hello?

Re:Behold the future of gaming discussions:

[caitsith01]

I'm definitely a gamer, albeit a non-Xbox/Playstation one, and I've never heard it used by anyone in meatspace.

Re:Behold the future of gaming discussions:

[Sparton]

It's OK. It's the internet. You're not supposed to catch other people's sarcasm.

The reason GameStop, etc are pawn shops:

[patio11]

You are in business selling Commodity X at the market-clearing price of $55. You can buy it from Supplier A or Supplier B. Supplier A charges $30. Supplier B will accept $5 in store credit. Choose wisely.

The reason every PC game company is abandoning retail:

You are in business selling Commodity X at the market-clearing price of $55. You can sell it through Channel A, where you keep $53 of every sale, or Channel B, where you keep $30 of every sale. Channel B's primary business line is in undercutting you in providing Commodity X. Choose wisely.

The reason every PC gamer could care less:

You must consume Commodity X. Your demand is inelastic with respect to price, because your need for X is great and your disposable income is many, many times the cost of X. The only time you care what the price of X is is when you justify pirating X because it is too expensive.

The reason every PC gamer should care more:

Within 5 years, you will not be able to buy X. You will rent access to X, or you will buy exposures to X, but both of these will be controlled by servers with access controls which will be transparent to you and almost foolproof at avoiding circumvention. (c.f. WoW) You will wistfully long for days when you could actually purchase X. The companies will laugh in your face and refuse to sell you X. You will rent X anyway, and whine about it.

Re:The reason GameStop, etc are pawn shops:

[Anonymous Coward]

My disposable income Price of X

Therefore I pirate, for the need is inelastic.

Hey, here's an idea for you game makers

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't you print enough copies for people to actually buy new?

A lot of people would love to support a game maker and buy only new games, but for some games out there, unless you grabbed it up right after it came out, you can only buy it used.

Maybe what you should be considering is additional prints of games or a downloadable version of a full game for those who do want to purchase it new, but it isn't available anymore. DLC is supposed to be added content, not important parts of the games. I'd have no issues with an additional ending being DLC, but not vital content.

And now I'm remembering why I hate online gaming with a passion.

So? 2nd hand is normal

[SmallFurryCreature]

In holland there is a 2nd hand bookstore chain "De Sleghte" which has stores in all the major towns. Does the book industry complain about them not making any money from there sales? Well, they might, but nobody cares. 2nd hand books are normal.

Pawn brokers make a living selling 2nd hand goods, any decent sized town in holland got some kind of 2nd hand store for household goods.

What student doesn't get their household goods second hand from family? Does Philips complain that they don't get any money from people using their vacuum cleaners 2nd hand? Well, perhaps they do, but who cares. 2nd hand goods are normal.

How many first time car buyers buy a new car? Or even a 2nd hand car? 3rd and even 4th hand are common. Does anybody care if the car makers complain about this? Of course not, the 2nd hand car industry is triving and a big part of the economy and the only way most of us can afford a car.

Who of you lives in a new house? A 2nd hand house? I have lived in places (actually lived in a castle once) that were hundreds of years old. 30th hand perhaps? Nobody would take an constructor serious who wants a piece of sale price every time a house changes hands again.

So why is the game industry different?

Re:So? 2nd hand is normal

[j-b0y]

Because a 2nd hand game is indistinguishable from a 1st hand game? When you buy a 2nd hand car, you except that it's suffered wear and tear and therefore worth less; except in the unusual cases where is end up being worth more as a vintage car.

I think the biggest gripe from the devs is that, between piracy and the second hand market, they see lots of people playing their games, but not seeing a corresponding amount of money in revenue. That's very much their problem which we're not obligated to solve, but we might not like the solutions.

Digital distribution of games will be the way forward for them; Capps says impulse purchasing is still alive, but in these days of over-saturated media coverage of upcoming games, with 'Previews' and 'Hands-ons' and forums and user-reviews -- who is really surprised anymore?? It's surely much more convenient to click 'buy now'.

Re:So? 2nd hand is normal

[Aladrin]

I've seen plenty of second-hand goods that are indistinguishable from first-hand goods, including cars and houses. In addition, games aren't necessarily as good second-hand. Wear and tear on the box, scratches on the disk, fewer online players for online games... They line up pretty good with other goods on how they age.

Re:So? 2nd hand is normal

[Anonymous Coward]

So why is the game industry different?

I'm with you - I think the games industry should put up like the book biz does, but there are several key differences between the industry.
Costs of production for a game are much higher for a game. This wouldn't matter so much (like it doesn't for the movie biz overall) if there were enough customers to recoup that loss semi-reliably (how many people DON'T watch any movies?). The games industry is a seriously hit-based business: IIRC, the top-selling 20% (10? 5?) of games make up for all the losses sustained by the other 80% - most games are a loss for producers, who only survive by hanging on to their big wins (this is also why sequels are so big in the industry: you're printing money in a business that doesn't guarantee that often). So, unlike books, you have high production costs and a lower customer base. This is really the games biz's fault for accepting such high production costs to make Crysis level graphics and in turn charge customers prices much higher than a movie or a book.
What this all means is that there are few enough games making profit as things are for second hand and rental games to not look like a tempting market to shut down if you can syphon some of the profit off yourself. It's nasty and annoying, but it's the natural outcome of games being so graphics- and geek-oriented. Good graphics means high costs, and cutting yourself off from a huge potential market (those people who don't like violence for breakfast, lunch and tea) in your MAINSTREAM games means fewer takers. Cars are expensive to make but everyone wants at least one. Houses ditto (and the price of building is paid for with each house). Books are cheap as hell to write and print - at least compared to vidjagamez.

Re:Exactly right. Look where the money is in PCs

[prockcore]

Man, that says a lot. The top selling PC game sold 2.25 million in all of 2007 (burning crusade came out jan 2007).

Meanwhile, Gears of War 2 sold 2.1 million on launch day.

oh come on..

[crossmr]

you're still going to get 99% of the game for the $50-$60 you just paid... just that 1% that costs another $40 will be stuff for hardcore serious gamers.. you know..things like menu screens and that little bit of code that says send everything to the primary video device..

The future of gaming purchases.

[DeadboltX]

The future of video games is going to go the way of downloads and shed physical media entirely. Take the Wii for example. Virtual Console games and Wii Ware are downloaded straight to the Wii console and are digitally locked to that particular physical console. You cannot second hand sell your gaming purchase unless you sell your entire console. This effectively prevents a used-games market for any of the downloadable games.

resale is why i buy

[Anonymous Coward]

Has anybody thought that this could actually hurt some 1st sales? I have bought some titles at prices i figured were too high thinking that when i was done i could recoup some of the initial outlay by reselling the game when i was done. If there is no secondary market, i can't resell. So, i might not buy the game in the first place.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

It's a Trap

[Anonymous Coward]

I blame a culture that demands economic growth. It isn't enough in any industry just to make a profit. You have to continuously make MORE profit. Sustaining equilibrium is not good enough even if it means making a ton of profit. From the article: "but the only way I'm going to double my sales is by expanding my reach - I can't sell two copies to each person who bought Gears 1". Gears 1 did great. Selling Gears 2 1-1 with Gears 1 would be extremely profitable. But that isn't good enough, because increased profit is the only thing that makes your stock go up. This attitude has brought our entire economy to the edge of collapse.

Re:Exactly right. Look where the money is in PCs

[Elldallan]

Well the pirates won't go away anyway they will still pirate the game, the whole game that is because all it takes is 1 person downloading that final content and putting it on the pirate bay.

What such a stance will do is eventually alienate the regular buyers because they would feel they have b een cheated on the content so they will go to the piratebay to get it for free and worse, once you piss them off enough they will just switch to downloading the entire game off the pirate bay and then you have lost a paying customer.

Re:Exactly right. Look where the money is in PCs

[Kneo24]

I imagine those are NPD numbers, so it only says a lot about North America. Other parts of the world do exist, and the numbers very well could be a lot different. Also, keep in mind that NPD numbers rarely, if ever, include digital sales. They only include retail sales.

Wrong wrong wrong....

[Kneo24]

Fuck, at those prices, they should be given a good excuse (We have to give 20% to the developer, or they start killing our business.)

How about... no? They sell those games are those prices because that's what the market supports. It also helps create their profit margins. If developers want people to buy new, give less incentives for people to stop trading in their games... such a s fucking better product overall. No, it won't exactly stop the market, but a good game is something people will hold onto far longer.

It seems Epic refuses to realize this, but as of lately those goons have been full of epic fail in the whole "thinking department".

Re:Gamers will take it, and LIKE it -- yeah right!

[crazycrazy]

Game buyers aren't stupid, and neither are game resellers. Games that have codes will be worth less when bought used, perhaps significantly less. Any game that institutes a 20 dollar fee to play the last level will be close to worthless as a used game sale. Clearly that is the idea the games publishers are going for. However gamers generally don't have unlimited budgets for gaming. And if I am a gamer that PLANS on selling or trading my game when I buy it to get more value from my purchase, I will definitely take that into account when I am at the checkout stand, and have a choice of games.

Let's look at winners and losers here, that 20 bucks for the code just transferred from me the original purchaser to the publisher. (Since any used buyer will want to deduct the code fee from how much they are paying me.) So I, the original purchaser am the one that will pay the price for the lack of a used market for the game I bought. And if I am a big time trader/seller, which going by the size of the used game market there are alot of us, then that is going to affect how many games I can buy new.

Bottom line I can't see how anyone other than a game publisher is happy with this new idea, not only are original game purchasers losing monetary value, but they are also getting a huge hassle to register codes and download content for something they paid full retail for.

As a side note this must have gamefly quaking in their boots.

I'm one of these evil bastards.

[iainl]

I played Gears Of War, and I didn't pay money to Epic for it. Instead, I put my brother's DVD in my 360. If Epic seriously thinks they're going to persuade us that a fee per Live userid is reasonable, I foresee disappointment.

Not that I'd have made it to this hypothetical final boss anyway; the tedious stop and start reload-heavy gameplay irritated me so much I gave up after the second level and played something better. But that doesn't really affect the argument here.

Playing again in 10 years...

[Crumplecorn]

...is not a problem if you pirate it first. Buy only after you are sure the game isn't crippled.

As for consoles, this is just another reason that they should never have had Internet access added.

Paying more for used than new.

[Carrot007]

Happens a lot.

The stores that sell used copies are usually the most expensive place to buy new and the prices they charge for used copies tend to be more than the places that don't sell used. At least this is true in the UK. I do not know why people buy at theses places. And this is not even mentioning online new pricing, though if you know where to go you can usually get as cheap as online in a store.

I have even seen these places that sell used copies have an offer on a new game (obviously the suppliers offer not theirs) and that priced the new copies much cheaper than the used in the same store.

As such I concluded the used market is a complete rip off around here, with the one exception being if you want to pick up a fairly old game and that is just because they are scared it will never move.

Re:Paying more for used than new.

[billcopc]

I do not know why people buy at theses places.

I'm sure you do know, you're just trying to be polite.

I'm a career asshole, and I will spell it out: People are stupid.

There!

Is that even legal

[Anonymous Coward]

IANAL

Sounds to me like that violates (totally bends it over the table and rapes it) the doctrine of first sale.

My understanding of Doctrine of First Sale is simply: you sell it, the buyer owns it and can do what he wants with it, including reselling it, and there isn't jack you can do about it.

i simply refuse to pay the full price!!!

[Sundawn]

it's not that i don't earn enough to afford those games. some games just don't have a high enough fun-$$$-ratio if bought at full retail price. and certainly not at what retailers charge for games in europe. average xbox or ps3 pricing is 60euro-70euro for a new game. budget titles are 30euro that would be 75-87$ for a new game and 40$ for a budget title. only very few titles have the right to claim that kind of money. one of the was GTA4. but most games would be utterly dissappointing and i would ask myself why i paid that sum for a game that managed entertain me for 2 hours at most.

How about downloadable keys?

[Simulant]

    Tell you what, why don't you sell me a key online and let me worry about distribution of the game itself?

  I really don't care to drive to Best Buy or pay for shipping when I already have the game ISO from bittorrent.

Just sell me a key. Please... I'll even pay full retail, though you should seriously consider offering a discount for keys only.

No secondary market.

[andr0meda]

In Belgium, rental stories for movies are allowed to rent out (old) games until the end of this year (2009). After that, no (second hand) games may be SOLD NOR RENTED any longer, since, apparently, only in Belgium, do they hurt regular sales.

Thanks for this to IFPI, aka the European version of RIAA and MPAA.

Haven't they considered?

[Anonymous Coward]

That some people don't connect their consoles to the internet? If those people were to buy the game, they would be screwed. They BOUGHT the game, but will never be able to play it as advertised. These games would quickly by law be required to carry a warning label on them, which would more then likely turn customers away.

Full price

[misterelie]

Sorry, but as much as I like certain games, I just do not find $60 U.S. worth of enjoyment in the games. Half that price is fine. I don't pirate nor play bootleg anything. I'm willing to legitimately pay for the games, but if I can wait 6 months to play a game, I'll find more value in it with a lower price tag than I can when it comes out. Even buying new the prices drop after a little while. $60 or even $50 is too high under most circumstances. I find my normal buy price is $20-$30 for a game: new preferred, but used is OK too.

One Way to do this: Downloadable but affordable

[harknell]

The most obvious way for the game makers to get rid of the used sales market is to make downloadable versions of their games affordable (or just make them available at all!). If I had the choice of buying a new boxed game for $60 or a downloadable one for $30 I'd easily buy the downloadable one, even if I knew it wouldn't be resellable. This plays into "The right cost" thing that many other people here mentioned as the reason they resell their games. $60 is just too high for a (probable) one time playthrough of a game so they resell it to recoup some of the cost of the next game. Why does it seem though that the many people that do sell downloadable games price them the same as the boxed version though? Absolutely stupid and dissuades me from buying that version. Obviously the cost for distribution is nearly zilch, plus no media, instructions, whatever....

Re:One Way to do this: Downloadable but affordable

[harknell]

Hey off topic: How the heck do you get a url in your sig file linkable? Every time I try to add a href into the form it simply drops it when the form is submitted (and yes it's proper html). I can't find any "bbcode" like info anywhere on this--or is this some kind of bug? I see tons of people with linked sig files so it's not a case where it's not allowed. Am I missing something?

Second hand games do not have full value.

[Digital_Quartz]

That's not true at all. A second hand game does not have full value.

The original Halo was $60, and Halo 3 is a far better game than Halo, so if that were true then Halo 3 should sell for way more than the original Halo. Yet Halo 3 does not sell for $200. Halo is no longer worth $60, because the original Halo has graphics and multiplayer gameplay that look pretty dated compared to the state of the art.

Guess what the problem is?

[mzs]

Games cost too much to make and too much to buy new. The solution is to stop making games like Gears and make games like MM9 and sell all games with a decent amount of content for sub $20.

Wait I'm talking out of my a*s, Gears made killer profits, nope it is just the devs and publishers being greedy and wanting more.

What if i want to replay the game?

[cuervo111]

There's something I dont get: - A 2nd hand sold game shouldnt be able be played till the end (or whatever), so... - The key must be only used one time to prevent this, so... - What if I want to play the game again? Should I pay for the DLC? Should I take the trouble to contact the EA to prove I am the "first only original 110% legitimate buyer" of their game? This is simply ridiculous!!

Wow great logic there!

[GameboyRMH]

They've identified a problem with their business model, and instead of legislating to protect their business model (like the recording industry), they've found a solution. What's the problem?

So they decided to screw the second-hand buyers of the games instead of legislating. Hmm that's less bad, I guess that makes it okay!

This is not a problem with their business model. The original seller does not make money when their product is re-sold by one of their customers. It's a fact of life. They should fucking deal with it.

Short term gain vs long term consequences

[tnk1]

This guy's job is to try and make more money. He's doing his job if he can ram a scheme like this down people's throats and still sell his games. The ultimate question is whether it destroys the industry in 10 years. That's the problem with business today, what they consider to be "long term" vision doesn't extend beyond the tip of their nose.

All this guy is ultimately going to achieve is helping put rental shops out of business, especially if other companies take notice and start using the same ideas.

Fact of the matter is that even rental shops buy new copies of a game, otherwise they don't have it to play when it comes out. If you make it so that it doesn't pay to rent the games anymore, then people will just download the hacks that let you break the content and the rental stores will no longer buy even the smaller amount of your games that they already did.

This definitely goes for PC games, but certainly consoles can be affected by it too.

I'm hoping that this will be filed under "lame brained scheme" and forgotten.

There are just some games I have no interest in buying for $50 or even $20, but I may rent it for $5. While it is true that software can be copied easily and cheaply, its not like even a download is painless. If 15 people like me rented their game, its a good bet that the rental store ended up buying a copy of the game that would never have been sold at all.

There is already plenty of money to be made, they need to realize, however, that they only wrote the title once. There's no inherent right for them to make every copy ever generated of that software make money for them.

Authors of books have similar issues, but I've never heard them clamoring to make money off of every reader who checks their book out of a library or who lets their friend borrow it. They know that you make money on the initial amount of books sold and then you make more money when people see what a good writer you are and want your next book when it first comes out, instead of waiting for someone else to let them borrow it.

Oooooooh....

[GameboyRMH]

That explains why Mario 64, Mario Kart, Metroid Prime: Hunters and Pokemon Diamond/Pearl are always priced as if there are people lined up outside the door with pre-order tickets for them.

I picked up Diamond used for $6 less than retail though. Eat that Nintendo!

Yeah I hate Nintendo now, the DS is the last system I happily bought from them.

How out of touch can an insider be?

[lewp]

We don't make any money when someone rents it, and we don't make any money when someone buys it used

Sure you do. That copy of the game came from somewhere. You want to sell games in boxes like physical goods, you should be ready to have them treated like physical goods. Toro doesn't make any money off the sale of a used lawn mower, either. That's not something that needs fixing.

I think a little bit of it is education so people realise that the reason there's no PC market right now is piracy. I mean, Crytek just put out some numbers saying the ratio was 20:1 on Crysis, for pirated to non-pirated use. So guess what? That's why there's no Gears of War 2 on PC, because there's no market, because copying killed it - and that's gruesome to a company like ours that's been in the PC market for so long.

Go tell Activision there's no PC market.

Sure, piracy is a problem, but you can pirate console games too (http://thepiratebay.org/browse/404). The barrier to entry is slightly higher, but still pretty low. The problem for Epic -- and Crytek, since both companies basically make the same game -- is that the post-apocalyptic-13-year-old-wankfest shooter has been done to death on the PC already, and that's all they know how to do.

Besides, why buy an Epic shooter when you can buy a Valve shooter? They're doing fine in the PC market, too. Of course, part of that might have to do with them actually making good games instead of just tech demos for their engine (all Unreal games basically). Kudos on making a game with an actual story for once, but "humanity's home planet gets attacked by hostile aliens and an unlikely hero must shoot his way through all of them" was more fun when it was called Quake, Duke Nukem 3D, Half-Life, or even Halo.

I think we're a long way from losing the impulse buy when you walk into the mall or the game store and decide to pick something up.

Not really. Brick and mortar game stores are painful places to go nowadays. No, I don't want to preorder title-that-isn't-coming-out-for-6-months. Everybody I know buys everything they can through Steam, and preorders their console games and everything else they can from Amazon. I don't think I even know where the nearest Gamestop is anymore. Even if I did, if I really wanted to pick up a game in person, Wal-Mart or Best Buy usually have much more stock of any games I actually want.

This guy seems to have a good grasp of the sales figures. I'm sure Gamestop does a brisk business of grandmas going to the "game store" to pick up a present, and I know the console market in general is a lot bigger than the PC market. Still, I can't imagine this guy actually plays videogames. I get the complete opposite impression when I read interviews with, say, Gabe Newell or Mike Morhaime.

Re:Exactly right. Look where the money is in PCs

[GreyFish]

> Either we can be WoW and monetize through recurring billing, which we get 96 cents out of every dollar

Is that actually true? and if so where did you find that number?

Really, seem simple to me

[brkello]

If they want to drive second hand shops out of business and still make money off their product, they should just sell it for $60 or whatever initially. Once that initial wave of people buy the game, drop it to $40. Once the people who like that price point start to dwindle, drop it to 20 or 15. Why buy some used crap when you can buy it new. As long as you are getting more back than production and distribution costs, it is still profit. More so than you would get from the used stores.

And if you are really evil, once you have driven all the used shops out of business, then jack up the prices again and don't lower them until it becomes a problem again.

I see what they're trying to do here...

[interploy]

They're trying to keep their games out of the used market to begin with. This guy basically wants people to pay twice just because they didn't buy like the company wanted them to and it's obvious no one is going to go for that. The whole concept is ridiculous. People buy used because they don't want to pay full price. Why the hell would they pay extra after the fact?

If they actually go through with this, what will happen is these DLC games will become blacklisted on the used market just like MMOs and DRM-crazy games like Spore are now. The renter market doesn't matter because no retailers rent out PC games.

I really don't see this working for consoles either. Renting still wouldn't matter because most renters don't beat the game. And those that do are also probably zealous enough to boycott a company for intentionally locking a game and then trying to charge extra to unlock it. Not to mention whatever fees Sony or M$ would charge to use their services would either cancel out the DLC profit or put the price so high no one would buy it anyway.

If they really wanted DLC to fly they'd study the Korean's business model more. It makes much more sense to give out a basic game free and charge small fees for extra content, rather than what they're considering here.

Why not just make games worth keeping?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not just make games worth keeping?

We're talking EA here... that's not gonna happen.

Secondhand purchases are more intelligent

[bobthegreat1224]

I'm getting tired of absurdly short single player releases. If I go buy Final Fantasy 12 at its original release price of $50 for the PS2, I can spend an easy 100 hours in the game, and I never feel ripped off in the slightest. If I buy Dead Space for $60 and it takes 12 hours and Mirror's Edge for $60 and it takes 6 hours, what am I supposed to think? People wonder why piracy is so common. Use simple logic. Most movies are not worth $9 to see in a theater. Most movies are not worth $30 for a bluray disk. Most DVDs are not worth $20 to watch one time. Most CDs are not worth $15 or more to get the one hit single and an album of filler. You know what is worth the money, though? Buying used games, renting from Blockbuster or Netflix, and downloading the one good song from iTunes. Make a product worth buying, sell it for what it's worth, and people will buy it. Fail to do so, and the money will go to someone else.

This is actually genious (if done correctly)

[mkraft]

The publishers are being paid for second-hand sales, because the existence of a second-hand market allows them to charge more for a new product than they could otherwise.

This makes absolutely no sense. The game companies make $0 off of resale of used. So if they implement this and the people who bought used games don't buy the game, they haven't lost anything. Implementing this could actually gain them sales, if they implement it correctly, which would require lowering the price of a new game. Michael Capps says of all the people who played Gears, only way less than half bought it. Let's make up some numbers here. Let's say Gears sold 1 million copies at $60 each for a total of $60 million. Now let's say that 3 million people played the game (1 million bought used and the other 1 million rented).

Now let's say they implement vital parts of the game as DLC and give out free codes to people who buy the game new and charge $20 to everyone else. Then let's say they lower the sale price to $40 since they expect more people to buy the game new. If more than 1.5 million people buy the game new, they have now made more money than they would have previously.

So by killing off the used game market, they could actually sell the game at a lower price and end up with a larger profit which would be a win/win scenario for both gamers and game companies.

How about Free DLC based on when you purchased?

[trdrstv]

Essentially they need people to buy early on in the release cycle (to maximize profit) and to keep people from trading it in to combat the used market.

So, how about if a publisher would announce that their DLC was free based on when you bought the game.

Let's use Gears of War and Map packs for an Example. Every month they come out with different Multiplayer Map and charge (say $5/$10 per pack), But Every Update (including maps) GOING FORWARD with your retail copy is Free.

If you bought it at launch all the updates (including maps) are free but if you buy it After the first map pack is available, then Every update (except that one) is free and so on.

It's a tradeoff

[Dire Bonobo]

What can anyone do about it? Nothing. What COULD everyone do? Ignore the game. Don't pirate it. Don't purchase it. Don't talk about it on forums. But that won't happen. Most will happily take whatever the game publisher does to them just so they can have that shiny new version of their favorite game.

Some people do exactly what you suggest. I personally have gone from talking excitedly about a game to literally saying "I guess I'm not getting that, then" in a matter of seconds after finding out that it would install invasive copyright software on my machine. Never played it - plenty of other things to do. A guaranteed sale that was permanently lost for the sole reason of overly-burdensome security measures.

How many people do that? How many times has that happened? I don't know. It does happen, though, which means that it's a very real question whether onerous security measures will help or hurt sales.

Doesn't it make you wonder?

[concoursrider]

Could game producers be putting this tripe out in the public eye just to see the public's reaction? Surely with all the intellectual 'talent' here we are providing real world feedback.

sigh

[sgt scrub]

If I had a penny for the number of people that played the shareware version of doom then bought the game, then played the mods, then bought doom 2, then played the mods, then bought the commemorative version, then... I'd have a ton of cash and still wouldn't peel off 60 bucks to buy a shitty game released by epic.

The First Sale Doctrine is So 20th Century!

[Anonymous Coward]

"Welcome to the New Economy, pal! Didn't you hear? You no longer have to actually provide anything in order to make money!"

I don't quite understand what it is with media publishers these days. They seem to think that there's something fundamentally different about media that carries digital data aside from the obvious departure from analog format, and that owning a disc that contains software is somehow different from owning a book that contains words. Aside from the book being more difficult to copy (but far from impossible, especially since it's possible for software to transcribe scanned print now) you would think that the same principles apply. Evidently they don't.

What modern publishers of music, movies, and software are doing today is cheating. They're acting outside of the conventional norms of trade by selling licenses instead of actual products. When you purchase a book, you own that physical copy of the book and the information contained in that specific copy. You don't own the book's contents as a whole work (that is, you can't claim rights to it equal to the author or publisher, such as the right to publish or the right to alter it and then call it your own) and you can't legally copy the book's contents and redistribute that information independent of the physical copy you own, but if you wanted to lend or resell the book, you're free to because that copy is yours. When you do that, you're also probably not making any money yourself. If anything chances are you're actually losing money since the resale price of a given item is usually less than retail. However, if you buy a license to view or use a piece of media, the rules change. Not only that, the rules are set by the publisher.

According to publishers today, you might as well not even really own the discs the data is stored on, the copy of the documentation that came with it, or the packaging it came in. What you're actually buying is permission, and as part of the package a copy of their data is given to you for you to use within the guidelines set by their license. Violate those guidelines or fail to meet their expectations and your permission to use their product is revoked. Media publishers working in digital media no longer sell copies. They don't sell actual products. They sell licenses for media content that you then host for yourself.

So what do basic EULA legalities have to do with this? They've spawned a dangerous line of thinking among publishers that's causing a whole lot of trouble, especially for savvy users like us who are concerned about this sort of thing and don't enjoy being ripped off. Publishers and developers are now keenly aware that they don't really sell anything. They retain owner-like rights over the copies of their data sold to customers even though the physical copies of that data are transferred into the customer's care. That means they can effectively do whatever they want, and if the customer doesn't like it, they can forfeit their right to use the product they purchased. That line of thinking leads to bad moves like this that are sure to make a lot of more rational customers think twice about their purchases - or rather, experience some powerful buyer's remorse.

When the publisher cheats the game, everybody loses. Operating under the assumption that rentals and resales are costing them a large fraction of potential first-sales, they want to find ways to skirt the first sale doctrine and make sure that everyone who plays pays the price. These ideas may also originate from the theory that anyone who has used the product will retain the data licensed to them and use it in a way that's not legal under their license, and that a rental or a resale counts as another installation. In the case of software especially that may be true, but there are other, better ways of dealing with that problem than harming the customer's first sale privileges, harming the value of the product, and forcing legitimate customers to pay more for the same product.

As much as I'd like to give them the benefit of

It would be nice if that were true

[hanako]

however, games that sell for $20 or less and have demos you can check out before you buy are STILL pirated. visit any warez forum, they happily trade all the small/indie/downloadable/casual games and cheer about how much they enjoy these games they aren't paying for.

Re:That would be like getting people to pay for se

[TurboniumOxide]

Then you kill the hooker and take your money back. Then curb stomp her.

Laaaazy

[Reapy]

All of these publishers are searching for alternative pricing schemes lately, trying to turn a greater profit. But the thing is, no amount of clever slicing and dicing of your content will change the fact that good games sell, and shitty games tank. That's it. That's the facts.

It's just like weight loss. Calories in, calories out, bam, end of story, no way to avoid this.

Good game == Good sales.
Shitty game == shitty sales.

Not very difficult (except for the coming up with a good game part).

So is a 2nd hand game

[SmallFurryCreature]

A 2nd hand game is old, has been out for a while obvious, its manual will have been read, the disc will have some wear and tear. Go look at 2nd hand games, they don't have the newness of the new boxes.

Games themselves age, this clearly proven by the game industry as they discount older titles. In fact 2nd hand games got a very odd market as they must be sold quickly before the discount game itself becomes cheaper then the 2nd hand game.

The wear and tear is there, NOT in degredation of the actual product but in the time delay between release and you getting to play a 2nd hand game. Same as for books.

No, sorry, your argument doesn't hold much water. It doesn't work for the book and music industry, so the question remains, why does the game industry feel it can change the rules.