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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[antic]

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

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.

[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.

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..

[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.

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.

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

[ceoyoyo]

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

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

[killmofasta]

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

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

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: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.

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!

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: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.

DLC as DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

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

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.

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.

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: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.

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!

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

[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: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.

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

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

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!"

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.

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.

OT: Heh

[NotQuiteReal]

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

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!"

Re:Yarr harr fiddledy dee...

[PitaBred]

Welcome to copyright law being way behind where technology is.

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.

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.

It's exactly like that

[caitsith01]

...except here Epic is fucking you.

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?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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.