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New Sony Patent Blocks Second-hand Games
silentbrad writes in with a story about a Sony patent that would block the playing of second-hand games. "... the patent application was filed on 9 December 2012 by Sony Computer Entertainment Japan, and will work by linking individual game discs to a user's account without requiring a network connection meaning any future attempt to use this disc on another user's console won't work. The patent explains that games will come with contactless tags that will be read by your console in much the same way as modern bank cards. When a disc is first used, the disc ID and player ID will be stored on the tag. Every time the disc is used in future, the tag will check if the two ID's match up and, if not, then the disc won't work. The document goes on to explain that such a device is part of Sony's ongoing efforts to deter second-hand games sales, and is a far simpler solution than always-on DRM or passwords. It's worth noting that Sony has not confirmed the existence of the device, and the patent doesn't state what machine it will be used in, with later paragraphs also mentioning accessories and peripherals. ... There's also the issue of what happens should your console break and need replacing, or if you have more than one console. Will the games be linked to your PSN account, meaning they can still be used, or the console, meaning an entire new library of titles would need to be purchased?"
...customers do not (want to) know it and continue buying from these assholes.
Well, have a very nice fuck you year Sony.
All these DRM schemes are future-failures. More specifically, at some point in the future, you will be denied the game you purchased because of the DRM. Get a new console? Now you have to (somehow) reset your card so you can run it on the new console. Want to take it to a friends house? Pack up your console! Company goes out of business, or stops supporting it because it's obsolete? Say goodbye. In the future, old games won't be worth more because of rarity. They'll be worth more if you still have some way to make them work after their DRM scheme fails. Of course, it will be cracked. Quickly. Which is a GOOD thing.
Just don't buy anything by Sony.
because then I just need to continue to avoid SONY and it won't affect me.
Except that Steam games are also available hacked, so it does not work. The reason why Steam works is because it makes actually buying the games attractive and it often has extremely good deals with sales months and so on.
So the competition will be less tempted to steal their IP, and I as well as surely many others can take their business to them!
Officially, screw you Sony. I will never, ever, over my dead body buy another product from you, or an affiliated company.
And to their patent lawyers, please, I beg you - Make the patent watertight.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
There is a really simple solution to this. DO NOT BUY ANYTHING FROM SONY. Complain to magazines and web sites that review their stuff. If they ignore you then boycott that site / mag too. DONE. Don't bitch and whine about it. Don't wave your arms and scream it's unconstitutional while you stand in line to fork over $75.00 for the latest repackage of the same game you've already played 50 times. Just Freaking walk away! People really fail to grasp this. Don't bother to pirate their stuff. Sure this can be broken - but why? Treat them like they don't exist. Honest you WILL live without Sony. But Sony will NOT live without customers. Then if this actually matters to enough people Sony will become a responsible corporation and behave in polite society. If not then you will have taken the moral high ground anyway, and probably given your money to a responsible studio that doesn't treat its paying customers as mortal enemies. Had you rather be on the side of good - or play Killzone 15? Free choice. It cuts both ways.
Also with Steam, I'm not locked to a specific machine. I can load my steam account on my Wife's PC or my Brothers laptop or one of my three other computers. Sony wants to lock the disk to a specific machine, which are normally not very portable.
Of course I already avoid all Sony products including any subsidiaries I know about.
Though it was a recent legal battle, in at least in one European country Steam has to allow resale of purchases. Don't know when it is coming into effect or if it will proliferate to other regions, but it is a battle fought and lost by them.
Always behind on technology, but on the cutting edge of evil.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
The 2nd hand market exists because the price of games are too high.
Second hand markets will continue to exist, no matter what the price of the new product; so dropping the price of new games isn't going to solve that "problem". I do wonder what effect abolishing the second hand market would have on new games sales though - nievely you might say that new sales will increase because there is nolonger any competition, but that ignores the fact that the customer only has a finite amount of money. Lots of people fund their new purchases (in part) by selling stuff they no longer want, if they can't sell their old stuff they have less money to invest in new stuff. I'd certianly be less inclined to blow £50 on a game if I knew I could never sell it, and similarly less inclined to spend £hundreds on a console if I knew I could never buy any cheap games for it. (But then maybe I'm wrong - I'm not a gamer, I can think of far more fun things to do with my time and money than sit in a darkened room in front of a console for hours on end).
http://blog.nexusuk.org
So, I have seen the light and realize that Sony is a company that will do more harm to itself then good and therefore deserves to be losing the billions it does.
Sony's gaming division is the only thing Sony has left. They lost in the consumer electronics race for TV's, home audio, mobile audio, eBook readers. I mean the last 20 years of Sony's history has been about failure more then success. However I don't think Sony will create a decent product in the PS4 if this is the direction they are taking by creating consoles that will reject used games and require some kind of network registration to play a new game for the first time.
Sony should do one of two things, either sell off the hardware to Samsung, or sell off their entertainment divisions to Hollywood. By trying to be both a hardware manufacturer and content provider, Sony has always been at odds between trying to protect their content and creating innovative devices, they are failing to do both now.
Sony stopped trying to make the best products and instead are only succeeding in becoming the world's best asshole company, which is amazing given that Apple exists,
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
IANAL, but I wonder if such a patent, assuming valid, would be legal to use in the US and other jurisdicitons. There is a lot of case law describing consumer sales and what one is allowed to do with what one purchases, including resale of said goods. While Sony might have a legal patent, it might not be legal to impliment it.
As I said, IANAL, but maybe somebody who is could chime in.
I've been around long enough to know:
#1 - when it boils down to making money it has been repeatedly observed Sony will lie, cheat, steal. The conclusion it will be tied to a machine is a more likely scenario IMHO. If we do nothing now, then we really can't complain later if the worst case does happen and if nothing comes of it then no harm was done by collectively saying "We don't want this"
#2 - being complacent and saying nothing usually results in the worst situation. If Sony does it and gets away with it, others will too. The most resent situation I can think of is the no class actions in a TOS agreement. We're all sure if challenged it won't stand up, but it didn't stop Microsoft and then many others from following suite.
#3 - The squeaky wheel gets the grease. Voicing disperser over potential situations may result in a company rethinking a particularly smiley decision. I can't count how many times where the public response to a companies "we're going to" situation turned it into a "We'd never think of" situation.
#4 - waiting until a situation occurs to complain results in very little if anything being done. Often companies will at that point will take an even stronger stance to try and convince their shareholders they made the right decision, backtracking on a decision after action has been taken makes them look weak and loses money.
There's a lot of Sony-hate swirling around the comments on this story. Believe me, I can understand that. This isn't exactly the most pro-consumer technology ever to have been patented (though as yet, Sony haven't said they intend to actually use the technology).
However, I actually see this as symtomatic of a wider problem for the video games industry; very few people are making money from it. Sony makes some pretty thumping losses these days; their gaming division is one of the better performing parts of the company, but it's still a long way from where it was in the last console generation. Nintendo's making some pretty big losses; it had to overturn a long-held hardware-at-a-profit business model to get any kind of installed base for the 3DS, has had to continue to sell at a loss on the Wii-U and faces an uncertain future of the Wii-U doesn't get traction. MS's situation isn't quite so bad, but its stock price has been flat for a decade and if it had the same currency issues that its Japanese competitors face, then its situation might be just as bad as theirs.
The situation's hardly any better in the land of games development. Big developers like EA struggle to turn a profit despite trying every trick they can think of (day-one DLC, online passes, season passes etc). Their few guaranteed cash-cows like the annualised sports series and modern military shooters are basically the only reason that the more interesting games they put out can continue to appear. Mid-sized shops like THQ which don't have those cash cows are in very unpleasant places indeed. A couple of companies like Zynga and Rovio manage to get-rich-quick on the basis of low-budget titles that strike it lucky with the zeitgeist, but they increasingly look like one-hit wonders. And for every indie studio that produces a hit, there are 99 that produce forgettable garbage before vanishing into obscurity. It's even worse over in Japan, where all but a few of their developers have given up on true global competition, focussing instead on the same domestic kids-and-otaku market that most anime is produced for. Some people are clutching at free-to-play/pay-to-win as a potential solution, but that bubble's already bursting.
And retail? Here in the UK, our biggest specialised retailer (Game) went into administration during 2012. Sure, it got rescued, but it doesn't seem to be doing particularly well since then either. Its most direct competitor (HMV) looks like it won't survive the next few months.
Make no mistake, stuff like this latest Sony patent isn't thought up by plutocrats sipping champagne as they lounge on top of a Scrooge McDuck style lake of gold. These are desperate moves to stay afloat in what's become, over the last 3 years or so, a very unfriendly industry.
People moan about the price of games, but these are, in real terms, substantially lower than they were a couple of decades ago, when development costs were a fraction of what they are today. What I'd actually welcome is a company which is prepared to say: "We won't do any of this evil stuff like anti-resale measures or day-one DLC - but for those games with high development costs, we will accordingly charge a higher price than you've gotten used to paying". The prices of Wii-U games are noticably higher than those for the older platforms - but unfortunately, most of them are very thin pickings compared to other games, or are already available on other platforms with a much lower price.
Well because there are a number of benefits to steam's method.
I can play my games offline.
I can play my games on ANY pc,
I get my games dirt cheap during sales. usually for 50-75% off retail. ( I have not paid more then 30 dollars for any game in years now, and I own all of the big titles that I want.)
I do not have to keep track of the media.
I do not have to keep track of CD keys.
They allow me to backup the games.
I do not have to have a cd in the drive while I am playing.
So I do not have a method to resell my games. I never sold games before Steam, in fact I usually just lost one of 5 cds or the cd key. In fact my games from before steam are mostly unplayable due to either a damged/missing disc or a missing CD key code.
That is why I use steam. They give me a fair bit in return for loosing the ability to sell the game. If you want to bag on DRM/Online distributing, you should take a look at games for windows live. If anyone deserves ridicule they do.