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Anger With Game Content Lock Spurs Reaction From Studio Head Curt Shilling
MojoKid writes "Studios and publishers are fighting back hard against the used game market, with the upcoming title Kingdoms of Amular the latest to declare it will use a content lock. In this case, KoA ups the ante by locking out part of the game that's normally available in single-player mode. Gamers exploded, with many angry that game content that had shipped on the physical disc was locked away and missing, as well as being angry at the fact that content was withheld from used game players. One forum thread asking if the studio fought back against allowing EA to lock the content went on for 49 pages before Curt Shilling, the head of 38 Studios, took to the forums himself. His commentary on the situation is blunt and to the point. 'This is not 38 trying to take more of your money, or EA in this case, this is us rewarding people for helping us! If you disagree due to methodology, ok, but that is our intent... companies are still trying to figure out how to receive dollars spent on games they make, when they are bought. Is that wrong? if so please tell me how.'"
From what Curt Shilling has said, the content is not on the game disc and was intended to be released as (day-one) DLC, but instead, those who buy the game get it for free. I really don't see the problem, myself.
I had a sig once. It was lost in the great storm of '09.
Is that wrong? if so please tell me how
There's nothing wrong with wanting to make a profit. There's everything wrong about withholding product and lying about it.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
First sale doctrine. QED.
They are preventing someone from having anything of value to sell after they are done with it. Perhaps if the game didn't cost so much in the first place it would have less value used and more would buy it new - what a concept. I don't buy too many games these days but I play many older ones and some online games. It's stunts like this that would prevent me from buying this game new OR used. $50 and $60 dollars per game is crazy and has greatly curtailed my desire to buy. Between crappy DRM that makes my life hell and is now starting to limit even hardware changes to publishers pulling crap like this to ensure I cannot resell any game I buy I simply have no stomach to purchase their crap. Let them go bankrupt and someone who values their customers more take their place so far as I'm concerned....
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
companies are still trying to figure out how to receive dollars spent on games they make, when they are bought. Is that wrong? if so please tell me how.
In my case they need to figure out a better way to receive my dollars. There's absolutely nothing wrong with what they are doing. It simply means that I will refuse to support their business by purchasing their products. If enough people feel the same way, then they will either find a way to stop treating people like shit and make money or go out of business.
Make games I don't want to sell 2 weeks after I buy them?
I still got my original copies of Chrono Cross & Star Ocean 2 from launch day. Just sayin'...
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... this is us rewarding people for helping us!
Where did this jackass study economics? This ain't the way it works: I give you money, you give me something of equal value in return, period. His former dean and professors should fail him retroactively.
What a spin doctor.
"We're not trying to take more of your money, we're rewarding you! By generously allowing you to access content that you've already bought from us and that already belongs to you. But we don't allow you to resell that content that you bought, even though you're legally entitled to. We don't want to reward you as much as that."
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
[rant]Game companies are already forking us over on DLC. When you buy a game, figure on 2x the list price in order to get a *complete* game.[/rant]
I never buy new games anymore. I wait until you can buy the game, all the expansions, and all the DLC on Steam for $20 before I buy it.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Game companies, like more and more content and service providers, seem to be contesting the concept of ownership. They want to charge just as much (or more) for their products as they've done in the past but with fewer associated rights. Or they want you to pay perpetual subscription and licensing fees. Secondary markets for games (and books, music, clothes, cars, etc.) aren't some new phenomenon created by interweb hackers and sexting teenagers. Its been a fact of life for commerce for quite a long time. Why suddenly begin treating it like a threat to your business now?
I've bought more legitimate games for my PS3 than any other system. Want to know the secret? I pay $25.00-$50 per game. They ship from the UK, from OZGameShop.com There's no DRM, there's no bullshit. I put them in my PS3, they install, and they play. I don't have to be online to use them. I own 26 Playstation 3 games, I even preordered 2 of them and paid full price $70-100. That's more than every other console I own combined. If you try to force me to pay $60-120/game. I will stop buying games again. You will have priced me out of the market. I will prefer to spend my $500 on PC hardware, and crack your software. Because I can't justify YOUR prices. There's a point where buying a game is a good honest deal and I will buy many games. But then there's the point where you're ripping me off blind, and I will stop buying your products. It's your choice really. I pay well above average for the humble bundles as well. My first payment was $35 because I saw the value of what they wanted to sell. I wouldn't own any PS3 games or even a PS3 if I couldn't get the games I want for $25 each. You wouldn't have 29 sales of games, hardware, and controllers without that available. That's about $1200 Sony and it's publishers would be missing. Don't screw over gamers, and we won't screw you over. Stop acting like entitled children. You don't own our money and we don't owe you anything.
Curt
I can see that you might struggle to understand why you shouldn't get a cut every time something you once produced is re-sold. After all, when you buy a used book you send some money to the original publisher right?. And every time you sell your used car, you are happy to make sure a percentage makes its way to the original manufacturer don't you?.
Just think, that beautiful antique Ming vase you brought, the original effort and creativity that went into the painting. It's unique, some Chinese artisan spent months, or even years, of their life making it. They would never do that if they didn't know that hundreds of years later when you bought it at an auction in New York, they were not going to get a cut of that.
Yes, I see your problem. Your problem is that an item's value consists of it's useful value (the value of actually using it), plus the residual value. The residual value is the amount the owner can get by selling the item once they have no further use for it. You are attempting to reduce the residual value artificially. Your problem is that reduces the actual value of the game over all. So guess what? people won't pay you as much for it.
Your other problem is that you really don't understand the above.
It seems developers can't win with day-1 DLC. If they release it normally, it's content that should've been released on the disc (even if it was gold or content locked before the DLC was finished). In this case, they're including a one-time-use code to get the DLC for free; isn't that better than asking ALL players to buy the DLC?
I don't see how this is worse than the other "project 10-dollar" schemes of having players of used games pay for a DLC that unlocks multiplayer or something, especially if the content isn't already on the disc (as the game developers claim).
Perhaps if they provided an online code generator that anyone could use to redeem for a free copy of the DLC, that'd suffice? It's worth noting that the PC version comes with this DLC already included, no code required, although there isn't much market for used PC games.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Curt Schilling, the CEO, is an ex-Major League Baseball pitcher who is likely headed for the Hall of Fame (he lead three different teams to 4 World Series). He turned his video game hobby, marketable name and tens of millions in the bank into a post-baseball career as game studio head. In parallel, he has flirted with the idea of entering politics as a conservative Tea Party-type candidate, and wrote occasional political as well as baseball commentary on his 38 pitches blog.
To nobody's surprise, 38 Studios (38 was Schilling's uniform number with the Red Sox) soon fell well behind schedule on their AAA game, and was hemorrhaging cash. They tried to get Massachusetts (their original home base) to guarantee a loan, but Mass said no. However, a business development board for Rhode Island (a notoriously poorly run state with a longtime corruption problem) agreed to co-sign a $75 million (!) loan, on the conditions that 1) 38 Studios relocate to RI; 2) RI gets a substantial equity stake in the company; and 3) 38 Studios agrees to meet an aggressive schedule of hiring hundreds of RI citizens to good-paying staff positions. The board is hoping that Schilling's company will help spark the emergence of a tech industry in RI. That's a big reason why they have so many employees, and why they have little or no wiggle room in cutting consumers a break. They need the revenues, now!
You may have noticed that they missed the 2011 Christmas season (as well as 2010, etc). Lots of Democrats pointed out that by accepting the government-guaranteed loan, Schilling violated all the "small government, free market" principles he'd been espousing in his blog. I've noticed that since the move, Schilling hasn't blogged about politics, and was amusingly silent when Boston Bruins goaltender Tim Thomas refused to join his teammates for the Stanley Cup victory dinner at Obama's White House (just the kind of news item Schilling used to delight in blogging about).
Good luck, Curt.
This isn't about games being picked out of bargain bin for $5 two or three years after release.
It's about the practice of game stores selling new $60 games, then a couple weeks later buying them back for $8 (or more typically store credit) and re-selling them for $55. It's a practice that sees almost as much money leave consumer pockets but half as much reach the people who actually made the games and is very wide spread. The stores deliberately under-stock new games in order to push people towards the used copies. It's typical to go in a week after release and be told they don't have any new copies, but there are a half dozen used for a couple dollars off.
It's a practice that's bad for the developers, the publishers and fairly bad for the consumers as a whole. Basically bad for everyone but the pawn shops in the middle. It siphons enormous amounts of money out of the industry and is one of the reasons that basically every studio smaller than EA or Ubisoft is forced to sell out or close, regardless of how well liked their games are.
Yes, measures taken to combat this have some nasty collateral damage. No such thing as perfect system in real life.
Because it diminishes the value of the product to the original buyer. I don't buy many secondhand games and never sell them back, so I'll use an example for something I would buy: a decent mac laptop. They're not exactly cheap compared to the Wintel ones, but they have great resale value. I may not want to spend $1k on a laptop, but if I can buy it use it for a year and sell it for $800+, I'm no longer asking myself "Do you want to spend $1k?" It's become "Do you want to spend $200 to have this for a year?" The fact that I can sell the thing easily makes me a willing primary buyer.
ObCarAnalogy: It's as if when you buy the car, you can never sell it. You can blow it up, you can park it in your garage, you can cut the top off and plant plants in it, but you can never sell it. Suddenly cars have become very, very expensive for people who only keep them for a year or two. Those people will start buying fewer cars.
Everything looks shitty compared to having the same thing for free.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
When a company sells you a game, there has to be some sort of means of guaranteeing that you can continue to play it in the future. I buy PC games because of two main reasons. PCs never become obsolete, you can always get a new an better PC. It's not like a console where you find yourself screwed into buying a new obsolete console when your old one dies to play old games. I recently played Falcon 2.0 from Spectrum Holobyte for a retro feel... I admit, I didn't have a 5.25" floppy drive anymore, but I did have the 5.25" diskette itself. So I downloaded a pirated copy of the game to play it. But I could play it after all this time. So my second reason is, I want to know, even if the company who makes the game goes out of business, I can still play it.
So, this type of DRM is a great reason not to buy the game since I won't be able to play it later. It has a limited life span.
Actually, that's not entirely true. Pirating games looks shitty compared to Steam in my opinion.
* No need to find new crack every time the game updates (or even check for new version.. it auto-updates)
* In-game chat system, with one-click multiplayer join function (for those games that support it)
* Savegames are stored on Steam's servers and synced between machines (for those games that support it)
* Consistent screenshot / gallery system across games, with upload support to Steam servers.
* Game statistics and achievements, displayed online on your profile.
* Direct access to high-speed download of games, no virus risk, minimal game install process.
* No need to search around, try different downloads, find one that downloads fast, then find out if it has virus, then find out if it works... Just click-click-click-click-click, and it downloads, full speed.
Yes.. Steam can fail (server down, can not start single player game), and it's offline modus can really do with some improvement (you have to be online to play offline? What?), but overall it does give some value over pirating games.
It's The Golden Rule: "He who has the gold makes the rules."
See, that's not true, Steam is a perfect example of why it isn't.
Valve has managed to create a DRM system that actually adds value to the game for the majority of users. Every single Valve game is just as easy to pirate as games from other publishers, yet they lose very little sales to piracy. Why do you think that is? It is because Valve makes buying from steam more attractive than piracy.
RUGBYRUGBYRUGBY
The problem is greater than they imagine and you will start to see it every where.
Just google the word plutonomy for the big picture.
The dilemma has always been to provide a customer with a product for a price that works for all. The problem is the price no longer works for the producer so they want to jack it. The blow-back is that customers, who do not think themselves thieves, but savvy consumers are being told they are no longer viable and not wanted.
As the majority of Americans continue to make less while a small part of them continue to make more you will see more and more "big companies" have this same fight. They don't see that the problem isn't that fact that as time goes on only fewer folks will have the ability to afford their goods, they will instead see that they need to lash out against the "unworthy" customers who just don't want to shell out the cash they know in their hearts their product is worth.
One should remember that Price is one of the 4 P's of marketing. We tend to think that it means that charging 5 to 10 times the true value of Chanel No. 5 is all that it is about but it also works on the lower spectrum. If your target market is spending 0.025% of their monthly income to purchase your product you need to remember that has to scale. I don't buy my DVDs at best buy. I buy them low cost from the WalMart bin or secondhand in pawn shops. It's not that I don't want to buy DVDs but that source meets my budget.
By continuing to start a war of words and technologies against folks who perceive they are your customer to you are basically telling me I am not your customer. I am not worthy of your product. Fair enough. If they keep this up their customers will find new products to fill that same niche in their income bracket, as they should.
I don't dream of Lamborghini's or Chanel No. 5. My heart no longer goes pitter pat to see the latest Spielberg flick on the big screen at today's movie prices. Although game design studio's may think their products are gold, and they may very well be, they will find by shrinking their own market, rather than finding ways to price appropriately that they also will have no market.
Looks like they want to get to their destination fast rather than slow. Screw 'em. I like board and card games better. If I need story I will pick a good pick up a god book or short story they may or may not have paid the rights to themselves (actually I will lend it from the library cuzz I can't afford to buy it.)
This lesson was learned by me again just the other day. The local coffee roaster that I have loved for years and seen them grow decided that a free cup of coffee could no longer be given if you bought a half pound of whole bean coffee instead of a full pound. The owner actually got the employees together to "discuss this" and then expounded on his personal view that it was too expensive. They never thought to offer a cup of coffee for 50-75 cents with the purchase of the half pound, instead the owner basically made the moral judgement that folks who can only afford half a pound of coffee (6 bucks by the way) are no longer their customer. So I am no longer their customer.
"Don't fear death... fear not living..." -me