Gamestop usually has an option to get 50% off a new game by trading two old ones in, that's definitely resulting in some new sales out of used sales. Besides I've got Bioshock for a tenner last fall.
companies like gamestop, who undercut retail prices by 50%
Really? I usually see them undercutting the MSRP by 5-10% (shopping around can give you bigger discounts than that). It's the reason I don't buy used (unless the game is so old that new copies don't exist anymore), a new copy is only marginally more expensive.
Yeah but notebooks are convenient because you can take them anywhere. You won't have broadband access everywhere so you'd still be without your games in most situations.
Previous owner? Blasphemy, in the future there will be no resale, once the god-corporation has decided to endow you with a piece of its product (in exchange for your money naturally) you will not allow anybody who has not paid the god-corporation tribute access the product! If you no longer want the product you will destroy it and dispose of it regardless of any remaining functionality.
I'd expect most of their buyers to be people who aren't aware of this system or its ramifications. Remember, to most people a computer is something that just works (and if it doesn't you yell at your son until he fixes it).
Oh, it probably was non-trivial, needed some brainpower maybe. Of course it wasn't difficult enough to have a real effect but that doesn't mean it was trivial.
We grab ad blockers because they do what we want, if they do more than that (e.g. block text ads) we aren't going to go out of our way to stop that. Animations are a much bigger deal if you don't spend your whole time browsing with animated ads everywhere, when I use someone else's computer I find even basic movement in ads unbearable because I set my browser up to disable all animations.
Content is a pretty broad term. "News" content is a dime a dozen on the internet but proper free movies, games, etc are still fairly sparse with most of the free ones being vastly inferior to the paid ones (note I said most, I don't want to get random examples of great free stuff) so the producers of the higher quality material can usually afford charging for it. The professional writers for paid websites are rarely any better than hobbyists putting articles on their free website.
Same here. I generally have flash and GIF animation disabled unless I need it (mostly because flash is a performance drain that shouldn't be running unnecessarily and GIFs are usually annoying, I don't want stuff moving in my peripheral vision when I'm trying to read something), anything beyond that has to be done manually. If an ad is annoying enough to make me bother to do that then forcing it down my throat would likely make me pick a different site to read. It's not like we have a shortage of people making free websites about stuff and these days professional journalists rarely if ever deliver content that's better than what other people do for free in their spare time. It's especially bad with writing on videogames where most people hardly even trust the professionals anymore because they're practically all bribed or otherwise compromised for the sake of the site's profits (e.g. troll articles to drive the hits up).
Still sounds insulting. I know I ignored some games after their demos felt insulting even if I heard good things about them (e.g. the arcade game demos on XBLA usually ended after about 10 seconds).
I believe C&C Generals made your units self-destruct a few seconds into such a multiplayer game. Generally a bad idea because you won't see people buy multiple copies for LAN play but they may be convinced by their LAN matches to get the full game when they go home. I'll mention Arena Wars because that game did it right, you can install the game as much as you want but unless the disc is in the drive it starts up as the demo. However that demo is still able to join the games started by the disced game (presumably only the one belonging to the serial) so during the LAN party everybody can get a taste of the full game with friends while afterwards they're left with demos that encourage them to buy the game for themselves.
I recall many different ingame breaker copy protections (e.g. Settlers 3 or so having iron smelters produce pigs instead of iron) but the false positives usually forced the companies to remove them quite fast.
Of course the same feelings can apply to robots (I recall a story about a minefield clearing robot that worked by using loads of legs and triggering mines with them, losing a leg for each mine, after seeing the robot crawl around and lose legs with every explosion the officer in charge of the test ordered it stopped because he felt empathy for the machine).
Now, I can understand the concept of a "Sex Offenders" registry. Victims of rape or pedophilia[..]
My objection to the statement is that "sex offender" is a term much broader than "rapist". They are popularly equated but a "sex offense" can mean urinating in public. People only hear "sex offender" and think they're dealing with a rapist even if the crime that caused the label is completely harmless.
Dunno, I just tell my computer to rip them and if it does that I assume the talk about "copy protection" on the case was just a lie. It's not circumventing if the damn thing doesn't do anything.
No, it isn't. You made the claim, burden of proof is on you. Go ahead and dig up a law about it somewhere in the civilized world.
Rules in the state of Lower Saxony, Germany. Video surveillance of "publicly accessible locations" is only permitted in order to protect people or objects located therein and only if protecting the rights of the recorded people is not more important. Furthermore any such locations must have visible measures declaring that the area is under surveillance. Any material collected that way that is not necessary for the purpose of protection (anymore) is to be destroyed afterwards. If a person is identified through video surveillance they are to be notified (unless it's for anti-crime purposes).
The federal level law is similar except it includes "for specified authorized purposes" and the definition for that wasn't at hand. Just uploading stuff to the web for laughs most likely isn't an authorized purpose. Since the federal laws are likely made to conform to a EU law you can likely find similar laws in all EU member states but I'm not digging through all those laws just to find you additional proof.
That was the first result I could find on Google. I also found a note that recording demonstrations is a violation of the basic right to gather.
Meh, if the game communicates with the server encrypted it either has the keys stored somewhere (replace them with your own) or performs a key exchange with the server (hand it your own). Since you can put your debug hooks on the unencrypted side of the cryptography system you can track the content that is being exchanged and once you know that you can just send it with whatever key you want to hand the game instead.
I just check to make sure my games don't have absurd shit like this in them, indie games are usually safe. After that Steam is more convenient than a console. Yes, there are the usual "what if Valve goes out of business" concerns but the games tend to be dirt cheap when I buy them so it's not a gigantic loss should they stop working many years down the road (and honestly most of them would probably be of no interest by then).
To me they sound more like a combination of wishful thinking and appeasing the investors.
Investors demand growth. The game industry has mostly been stagnant due to the similarity of most games. It's easier to paint pirates as a growth opportunity and claim you only need some tech to increase your sales than to admit that your product's appeal is limited and to get more customers you need to change your product. Tech sounds easy, making a good product for audiences you aren't already serving is hard because you often lack the expertise to do so.
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Gamestop usually has an option to get 50% off a new game by trading two old ones in, that's definitely resulting in some new sales out of used sales. Besides I've got Bioshock for a tenner last fall.
companies like gamestop, who undercut retail prices by 50%
Really? I usually see them undercutting the MSRP by 5-10% (shopping around can give you bigger discounts than that). It's the reason I don't buy used (unless the game is so old that new copies don't exist anymore), a new copy is only marginally more expensive.
Yeah but notebooks are convenient because you can take them anywhere. You won't have broadband access everywhere so you'd still be without your games in most situations.
People are willing to pay different amounts depending on what's delivered. An MMO can ask for more money than a singleplayer game.
Previous owner? Blasphemy, in the future there will be no resale, once the god-corporation has decided to endow you with a piece of its product (in exchange for your money naturally) you will not allow anybody who has not paid the god-corporation tribute access the product! If you no longer want the product you will destroy it and dispose of it regardless of any remaining functionality.
I'd expect most of their buyers to be people who aren't aware of this system or its ramifications. Remember, to most people a computer is something that just works (and if it doesn't you yell at your son until he fixes it).
Oh, it probably was non-trivial, needed some brainpower maybe. Of course it wasn't difficult enough to have a real effect but that doesn't mean it was trivial.
We grab ad blockers because they do what we want, if they do more than that (e.g. block text ads) we aren't going to go out of our way to stop that. Animations are a much bigger deal if you don't spend your whole time browsing with animated ads everywhere, when I use someone else's computer I find even basic movement in ads unbearable because I set my browser up to disable all animations.
Content is a pretty broad term. "News" content is a dime a dozen on the internet but proper free movies, games, etc are still fairly sparse with most of the free ones being vastly inferior to the paid ones (note I said most, I don't want to get random examples of great free stuff) so the producers of the higher quality material can usually afford charging for it. The professional writers for paid websites are rarely any better than hobbyists putting articles on their free website.
Same here. I generally have flash and GIF animation disabled unless I need it (mostly because flash is a performance drain that shouldn't be running unnecessarily and GIFs are usually annoying, I don't want stuff moving in my peripheral vision when I'm trying to read something), anything beyond that has to be done manually. If an ad is annoying enough to make me bother to do that then forcing it down my throat would likely make me pick a different site to read. It's not like we have a shortage of people making free websites about stuff and these days professional journalists rarely if ever deliver content that's better than what other people do for free in their spare time. It's especially bad with writing on videogames where most people hardly even trust the professionals anymore because they're practically all bribed or otherwise compromised for the sake of the site's profits (e.g. troll articles to drive the hits up).
Still sounds insulting. I know I ignored some games after their demos felt insulting even if I heard good things about them (e.g. the arcade game demos on XBLA usually ended after about 10 seconds).
I believe C&C Generals made your units self-destruct a few seconds into such a multiplayer game. Generally a bad idea because you won't see people buy multiple copies for LAN play but they may be convinced by their LAN matches to get the full game when they go home. I'll mention Arena Wars because that game did it right, you can install the game as much as you want but unless the disc is in the drive it starts up as the demo. However that demo is still able to join the games started by the disced game (presumably only the one belonging to the serial) so during the LAN party everybody can get a taste of the full game with friends while afterwards they're left with demos that encourage them to buy the game for themselves.
I recall many different ingame breaker copy protections (e.g. Settlers 3 or so having iron smelters produce pigs instead of iron) but the false positives usually forced the companies to remove them quite fast.
Seems to me like a bad idea because the final impression the player will get is that it's no fun and thus doesn't warrant buying the full game.
Of course the same feelings can apply to robots (I recall a story about a minefield clearing robot that worked by using loads of legs and triggering mines with them, losing a leg for each mine, after seeing the robot crawl around and lose legs with every explosion the officer in charge of the test ordered it stopped because he felt empathy for the machine).
Now, I can understand the concept of a "Sex Offenders" registry. Victims of rape or pedophilia[..]
My objection to the statement is that "sex offender" is a term much broader than "rapist". They are popularly equated but a "sex offense" can mean urinating in public. People only hear "sex offender" and think they're dealing with a rapist even if the crime that caused the label is completely harmless.
"Remember, no German!"
Didn't Activision's stock already peak with the release of CoD MW2?
Dunno, I just tell my computer to rip them and if it does that I assume the talk about "copy protection" on the case was just a lie. It's not circumventing if the damn thing doesn't do anything.
No, it isn't. You made the claim, burden of proof is on you. Go ahead and dig up a law about it somewhere in the civilized world.
Rules in the state of Lower Saxony, Germany.
Video surveillance of "publicly accessible locations" is only permitted in order to protect people or objects located therein and only if protecting the rights of the recorded people is not more important. Furthermore any such locations must have visible measures declaring that the area is under surveillance. Any material collected that way that is not necessary for the purpose of protection (anymore) is to be destroyed afterwards. If a person is identified through video surveillance they are to be notified (unless it's for anti-crime purposes).
The federal level law is similar except it includes "for specified authorized purposes" and the definition for that wasn't at hand. Just uploading stuff to the web for laughs most likely isn't an authorized purpose. Since the federal laws are likely made to conform to a EU law you can likely find similar laws in all EU member states but I'm not digging through all those laws just to find you additional proof.
That was the first result I could find on Google. I also found a note that recording demonstrations is a violation of the basic right to gather.
Meh, if the game communicates with the server encrypted it either has the keys stored somewhere (replace them with your own) or performs a key exchange with the server (hand it your own). Since you can put your debug hooks on the unencrypted side of the cryptography system you can track the content that is being exchanged and once you know that you can just send it with whatever key you want to hand the game instead.
I just check to make sure my games don't have absurd shit like this in them, indie games are usually safe. After that Steam is more convenient than a console. Yes, there are the usual "what if Valve goes out of business" concerns but the games tend to be dirt cheap when I buy them so it's not a gigantic loss should they stop working many years down the road (and honestly most of them would probably be of no interest by then).
To me they sound more like a combination of wishful thinking and appeasing the investors.
Investors demand growth. The game industry has mostly been stagnant due to the similarity of most games. It's easier to paint pirates as a growth opportunity and claim you only need some tech to increase your sales than to admit that your product's appeal is limited and to get more customers you need to change your product. Tech sounds easy, making a good product for audiences you aren't already serving is hard because you often lack the expertise to do so.
Some trivial disc check that prevents casual copying but won't give you a support headache would be closer to the sweet spot I think.
As the headline says, we're talking about Europe, not North America. I know your privacy laws are radically different.