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Game Retailers Hurting Themselves With Digital Distribution
GameBiz recently had the chance to speak with Brad Wardell, CEO of Stardock, about pricing and distribution within the games industry. Wardell follows up a bit on the Demigod piracy fiasco from a few days ago, and mentions that retail outlets may be on their way out.
"Retailers need to be careful about this stuff. They're kind of signing their own death warrants once they push digital distribution at the store. Once you have the thing set up — once you've experienced how to purchase the game or deal with it online — why would I go back to the store for the next purchase? Especially if the store isn't providing added value. If you're a retailer, you're killing yourself. If I can't get a game off Impulse, I'm going to Steam. I like stores, but I'm really lazy."
Online distro favors devs / publishers for several reasons:
The last is the huge one. Adobe and Microsoft have tried all kinds of tactics to supress consumers' ability to re-sell software. The game companies no doubt hate seeing used game transactions taking place without them getting a cut. With online distro, the re-sell market is crippled.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
How is it that "Game Retailers" are hurting "Themselves".
Shouldn't the headline read "Online Game Distributors killing Game Retailers"?
I haven't seen any actions on the Game Retailers part that is hurting themselves except for existing. I suppose you could argue they should have become what steam is. But that's passively letting yourself die out.
You all seem to be ignoring that deep down, most of us are still hunter-gatherers.
Personally, I like reading stuff on screen. Gives me way less cramps than holding a book or keeping my head at weird angles because the book is on the table. Yet, when I buy stuff, I want a physical presentation of that to put on a shelf. I want my books looking as nice as possible, I want my movies as DVDs and I want the good games to have the packaging standing around somewhere (with such a low number of good games coming out these days, the space used is negligible).
What I'd like to see is this: I go to Amazon, buy a book/movie/game/music and they'll send it just as we're used to. Then there's the option, like a gift wrap, to download the thing for another 3 bucks (gotta pay for bandwidth and server storage after all).
That's the way I want it. I don't want to have to bend over backwards to get my digital content from my media onto my harddrive. Even worse with non-digital content. The mind boggles at the thought of scanning a whole book let alone half a dozen or more. Considering that publishers have digital versions of just about anything they produce, one should think this would be a piece of cake.
From time immemorial man has had the tendency to acquire for free if he could get away with it. .license file which embeds the user's email ID, hardware ID and a few random details is quite hard to break yet not too costly.
Stealing Electricity when it was introduced was a BIG problem. Big enough for many companies to die. Eventually it got straightened out.
Same was with Telegraph. The number of times codes changed in Telegraph is too numerous. Since telegraph companies charged by word, companies had exotic dictionaries with vast number of definitions for each word: Long sentences for single meaningless words.
So was it with Telephone. People still steal phone talk time through pranks, tapping, etc.
Internet stealing through WiFi...
You can't prevent stealing.
You can only control your own costs so that a stolen Game did NOT result in adding to your costs. Like DemiGod is doing now for Stardock.
A
No, DRM would not do it. Gamers get mad when their PCs are hacked legally.
If your Game is stolen, and exchanged for free in torrents, but it does NOT add to your running costs, forget worrying about it. What does not cost you, should not worry you.
Of course your lawyers will argue that each illegal install is money stolen from you: that's not entirely true. A 11-yr old kid may want to play, but does not have the money to buy it. He will somehow steal it. You can't get money from him. But you can bet that he will praise it to his friends, some of whom will buy it.
Other crowd is the earning well-to-do crowd. They will the latest. And they will yours.
Others are professional hackers. They thrive on challenge. They WILL crack the most hardest Games, even BioShock. You can't control them.
Some, like me, will buy out of loyalty, or will crack it if it can't be bought in my country, or play a hacked version to see if its Good and buy it to keep my PC free of Trojans. And yes, i buy every Game stardock makes: Why? NO DRM. I don't even play their Games. I just buy and that's it. I play Company of heroes ONLY. Not even Crysis. But i still buy Political Machine, Gal Civ II, DemiGod, etc. Why? NO DRM, plus i like Stardock.
Their support is cool and their CEO seems to have realized that DRM a la, BioShock hits them back.
Thier only slip up was online resources. This is where they pay costs.
If yours is not online gaming, then you are good to go.
People who steal your Game may buy, may not. But as long as they don't cost YOU in server time or resources, why worry?
Its a Business Risk. Much like CISCO doesn't care if clone copies of their routers are sold in China. Why? They don't incur costs on such cloned copies. So no worry.
Think about it, but consult with a lawyer. IANAL. So beware. I talk from my experience only.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
Only for the excessively rich. The rest of us wait until the game hits the $19.95 bargain bin.
you might be incredibly wealthy and thinks that $69.99 for a game is nothing, but 90% of us think it's insane and wait for it to become affordable.
Digital distribution allows them to keep the price high as hell forever if they want, It costs nothing to make more copies for them and they dont have the stock of CD's or DVD's out in stores getting dusty over the course of a year forcing the price down.
also it helps game companies by destroying the used game market. If I have to buy all my Wii and Xbox360 games online, I cant sell them used or buy them used...
and the Game publishers are salivating uncontrollably over that idea, they desperately want the used game market to go away.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.