EMA Suggests Point-Of-Sale Game Activation To Fight Piracy

Gamasutra reports on a set of standards (PDF) published by the Entertainment Merchants Association to promote the use of technology that would "disable" games and DVDs until they are activated when purchased. "The effort is codenamed 'Project Lazarus,' and the EMA says it's assembled a consortium of retailers, home video companies and video game publishers to see how easily such 'benefit denial technology' could be implemented, and to evaluate possible cost-benefit analyses. The initiative is similar to security tags used in clothing retail that spill ink on garments if they're forcibly removed, thereby destroying the item. In such a situation, shoplifting is discouraged by implementing a solution that only the retailer can remove at the point of sale."

Comments

I am forever amazed

[Shivetya]

at the number of big box stores which don't lock these game cards up. The problem is especially bad at Target, where more than a dozen of different games were obviously "opened" along the seam. Even after explaining it to the the customer service people I swear they didn't care or understand. I did get them to allow for my opening the box in front of them to confirm if it had a game card in it, took three of the ones that looked sealed to get it.

Stores need to understand, these things are as valuable as the gift cards they sell. They are real money.

Any subscription based game should follow the activation method, it will save a lot of grief for the customer. It really helps us more than the stores because it isn't easy to get the store to refund it (I would hate to see what BB would think if you told them the game card was missing and you had left the store already). Yet for stand alone games I don't think it is necessary