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Ultraboy94

Buying Second-hand games could now be illegal

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It's already been established we're not actually talking about a game here, but on Dragons Den last night there was this girl wanting to start a "freecycle" type website aimed only at videogames. How long would it be, i wonder, before the developers would jump on her from a great height barking "You can't give away OUR games for FREE!!!".

And just earlier today i was thinking of making a t-shirt saying "I can live without your derivative, DRM-laden crap, can YOU live without my money?", but then i remembered i'll probably never buy another videogame again anyway. And more than likely only play Doom and ones i make myself.

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The only videogames I "bought" recently were the ones built-in into famiclones, cell phones and various crappy Chinese game consoles I collect....which are probably ripped off when not outright pirated, anyway :-p

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Maes said:

The only videogames I "bought" recently were the ones built-in into famiclones, cell phones and various crappy Chinese game consoles I collect....which are probably ripped off when not outright pirated, anyway :-p


Do you happen to have a website dedicated to Chinese consoles?

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This whole 'bout just seems stupid. The US government is getting stupider all the time.

In soon enough time, Garage Sales and Rummage Sales will be banned completly, along with craigsist and eBay. Just watch, it'll happen.

I bet Pawn shops will be forced to close too.

God fucking dammit.

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Ultraboy94 said:


A comment on the article, it´s a TERMS OF USE -case:

I think the journalist is misinterpreting the court ruling.
AutoCAD is sold under a special end-user licence, that you have to sign. Afaik. With your signature you agree to be the end user of the software and can not, without the consent of the developer, re-sell the software.

Extract from the agreement: (this is the tl;dr/BOORING stuff usually written in small print and it certainly not the whole agreement)

"Terms of use:
1. DEFINITIONS
The following Definitions shall apply to the terms and conditions of your Subscription:

“Software”: a copy of an Autodesk Inc. (or one of its subsidiaries) computer program which you are licensed by Autodesk Inc. (or one of its subsidiaries) to use and for which you have purchased Subscription. For purposes of this definition, if an Autodesk computer program is offered as part of a product series, bundle or family, then Software shall mean each of the computer programs included within such series, bundle or family. Any supplemental software code (which may include modular additions or extensions to Software, corrections, executables, libraries, plug-ins, enhancements or other software functionality which supplements and enhances that Software and which is considered part of the Software for which such code was provided) provided to you or your Users as part of the Subscription and/or Support is considered part of the Software for which such code was provided and the use thereof is governed by the Autodesk Software License and this Agreement.

and:

“Reseller”: a person or company that is authorized by Autodesk to sell Subscription (either directly to end users or to other Resellers) for a particular Software computer program."

...

The case here does not involve an "owner" but a "licence holder" for a product. It´s a lease.

Whether this may change what rights you have when "purchasing" software through "licenced providers", like steam, i can not say.

I may be wrong, but sure hope not.

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Maes said:

On the other hand, selling for $5 a game when the market MSRP is $50-$60 is not an insignificant risk...so then again, only large companies can try something like that, but there are clues that their profits are already marginal, so who would take that risk? Unless that move results in 12x more sales, it will cause a financial loss.

While $5 might be unrealistically low for a new game, opting for digital distribution instead of physical media can substantially lower the costs to be recovered before a game starts to turn a profit. Under those circumstances undercutting the MSRP is still a calculated risk but if it's supported by market research I think we'll see more publishers moving in the direction of digital-only releases.

I don't mean copying the game files around to your buddies, I mean legally saying through Steam's interface "transfer my game license for game Y to my buddy X, who can now download it and play it as if it was his own all along".

While you can buy games as gifts and give away extra copies of some titles, once a game's activated and linked to an account it can't be transferred.

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Maes said:

Didn't that -undoubtedly noble- attitude die somewhere in the late 80s/early 90s, when videogame production budgets first started being comparable to a movie's?


sounds like paychecks, if it takes so long like, 3-4 years or more to make one single game, then you have more then just employees, then you have many dudes outside your company, including some stupid bills from the the state. putting enourmus effort on graphic and sound quality is a waste if you wanna make a dynamic and exellent fragging game for example. the highest cost should be time beacuse games requires ofc much development, but if there is a chance to sacrifice small things that dont affect the gameplay itself ( small things )
then you take that chance so you dont break your legs if you fail.
gameplay and systems is the stuff. and the sound and graphics? heh, its much better if you can play a game from 2010 on a pc or mac from 1998 instead of only be able to play it on a pc or mac from 2010-2011

beacuse any one can use it.

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Maes said:

Didn't that -undoubtedly noble- attitude die somewhere in the late 80s/early 90s, when videogame production budgets first started being comparable to a movie's?

Before a small company of co-workers/friends made an fps that made them instant millionaires. That really was the love story of the nineties. Minus one bald man...

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Aliotroph? said:

Do you happen to have a website dedicated to Chinese consoles?


No, but it would be a good idea...I have a large enough and diverse collection to warrant a proper presentation ;-)

There are even some "Chinese knockoff exclusive" games that you won't find anywhere else, e.g. the "Monkey King" game for the NES made in 2005.

Technician said:

Before a small company of co-workers/friends made an fps that made them instant millionaires. That really was the love story of the nineties. Minus one bald man...


Not even close.

Id software's team was well beyond the romantic phase of the "a bunch of guys building a dream in their garage/mothers' basement" by the time they started working on Doom. They had a long string of commercial success during their Apogee years with Commander Keen and Wolf 3D as well as their earlier games, and they had pretty much access to top-notch development equipment and artistic creation aids.

AFAIK, the last time a "commercial grade" game could be developed single-handedly by a lone programmer (artwork included) dates back to the (early) 80s for what regards arcades and game consoles, and maaaaybe late 80s for what regards home computers.

GreyGhost said:

...opting for digital distribution instead of physical media can substantially lower the costs to be recovered before a game starts to turn a profit.


Seriously? How? When the boxed version of Crysis actually sells lower than the same game on Steam?

OK, the market can work in weird ways sometimes, but at least this seems to negate the cost advantage. Even if it wasn't actually on offer, it would still be what, $5 less? A $5 cost difference isn't that "substantial" when we're debating a TOTAL cost of maybe $10-15 (which most people would find reasonable? I dunno anymore) vs $50+.

GreyGhost said:

once a game's activated and linked to an account it can't be transferred.


...and yet none came here bitching "ZOMG STEAM STEPS ON YOU'RE RIGHTS TO SELL AND BUY SECOND HAND GAMES!!!! ZOG DID 9/11!!!11ONEONEONE111111!!" but instead they seem to be kissing it's (figurative) asshole, instead.

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well, physical objects are ofc more exensive beacuse you need the material shit, the transport shit, to make the cd and the folder, the transport shit again shit shit shit and even more shit before one last transport (this time often by car maybe even bicykle instead of truck) is being shitted into some old-stuff-box were the costumer finally puts it when its all intslled and done. this progress can take days or weeks.


so bying online and getting online and THEN storage it in ur pc is cleaner, and cheaper ^^ u get code instead of CD


u sell moar and cheaper and faster. depends on the costumers internet connection :D:D


and ofc some one is gonna burn private to CD anyway. but thats a completely different story.


... or is it?

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D_GARG said:

stuff about shit that costs


Yet somehow Amazon sells a physical copy cheaper than online "code", thus voiding your argument.

D_GARG said:

u sell moar and cheaper and faster. depends on the costumers internet connection :D:D


And also on the consumer's mentality and his/her country's trade laws and general business culture. In the US, the average Joe may be used to order his groceries by phone and billing his credit while sitting on the couch, and had had cable TV since childhood, which then became cable modems and had broadband before the rest of the world.

For an EU citizen the financial circumstances and consumer culture are totally different: first of all, just getting issued a credit card is a long and demeaning procedure, e-commerce isn't that developed yet, and Internet connections aren't suitable to support such a sales model (ADSL is a recent development, and cable TV/cable modems are unheard of in most countries of the EU). That is, in case you forgot that there is a market outside the US too.

The assumptions on financial/technical infrastructures that make this model viable and "cheaper and faster" for the US consumer, actually make it unworkable and prohibitive for the rest of the world.

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Maes said:

Yet somehow Amazon sells a physical copy cheaper than online "code", thus voiding your argument.
- its cheaper beacuse: 1.product is already made. 2.they send directly to costumer instead of store. also, much is sent via mail offices this means, that they have somewhat regular delivery.


And also on the consumer's mentality and -- :D effectiveness balanced with care for envoriment. CO2 can be lowerd by spend electrisity instead of fuckloads of truck driving, the entire internet marketing is ofc already running and is ofc under heavy still rapid development which kind of means that its the future, commercials via internet and suggestions via internet sales via internet and who is in the internet? its us and our children and yes, why not by via internet? when it comes to software u dont need physical objects beacuse you can make them physical urself ur USB stick, ur blank CDs, ur own mail. internet is the future beacuse its easy, fast, clean and robbery is easily avoided by risking only the money ur gonna buy with and not your entire real account by simply always having a dummy account, the physical stuff which is stuff uve orderd comes via ur mail box or nearest mail office.

yeye ok ur pizza and movies is delivered by bicykle :D

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Maes said:

Yet somehow Amazon sells a physical copy cheaper than online "code", thus voiding your argument.

With 20 sellers vying for business on Amazon is it any wonder that Crysis is cheaper there. Steam isn't subjected to that sort of competitive pressure and it's not as if game publishers are obliged to pass the savings on to consumers when they find a cheaper delivery system.

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Maes said:

Didn't that -undoubtedly noble- attitude die somewhere in the late 80s/early 90s, when videogame production budgets first started being comparable to a movie's?

Late 90's more like it - when Sony entered into the business, really. We got Final Fantasy VII, the first game to have a multimillion dollar budget and to feature nearly as much FMV as a feature-length movie.

After that, everybody had to approach the business like film industry, and that is also about the time that shit-headed publishers started buying up all the independent developer studios - Bullfrog was bought by EA around '97, for example. Raven was acquired by Activision about the same time. Couple of years later, the only person being made a bitch was John Romero, by Eidos. Even the greatest names in PC gaming now had to answer to their dollar-fisted overlords. The "garage door" slammed shut and the cage of the cubicle replaced it forever, to put it semi-poetically.

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Yeah, the budgets and gameplay started being comparable to movies..

Games aside, I wonder if ebay/amazon/etc will start removing the ability to sell/buy pretty much all software.

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D_GARG said:

derp



Quasar said:

Late 90's more like it - when Sony entered into the business, really. We got Final Fantasy VII, the first game to have a multimillion dollar budget and to feature nearly as much FMV as a feature-length movie.


Hold yer horses. FMV games were already getting old as early as 1995, and companies like Origin and Sierra already spent a lot of money on game development *cough cough* Wing Commander series *cough cough* Phantasmagoria *cough cough* and let's not mention stuff like Under a Killing Moon...

Ah right, this was on the PC, which apparently never mattered for gauging the market, all that matters is consoles, and before the Playstation there was nothing. At all.[/sarcasm]

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Maes said:

Hold yer horses. FMV games were already getting old as early as 1995, and companies like Origin and Sierra already spent a lot of money on game development *cough cough* Wing Commander series *cough cough* Phantasmagoria *cough cough* and let's not mention stuff like Under a Killing Moon...

Didn't mean that FFVII invented FMV, only that it was one of, if not the first, games on its scale to use it so extensively in a successful manner and be a wildly unprecedented commercial success and a game that people still discuss more than a decade later. Its cinematic quality was on par with any of the animated films that are regularly released now. It changed the definition of what a game could be.

1995 would be the start of what I consider the later 90's, as that's the mid point of the decade. DOOM and Super Metroid came out in 92-93, and those were the early 90's. Gaming was very healthy back then.

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well I havent seen anything Bad from ID, blizzard screwed up by being forced to join Activision *BLUARG, PUKE, SCREAM, CURSE* so they cant do shit about BOBBY KOTICK who now wanna make movie out of starcraft2 cutscenes as STARCRAFT THE MOVIE u know, you dont just make a movie out of starcraft (going of topic but what they're doing pisses me off) starcraft is Fucking Legend just like Doom is, for 12 years nothing have happend (ALMOST) until this latest year, and Fuck Off with Activision they only bully other companies and rape them on money they havent made a game of their own for a fuckload of time (less then 12 years..)

HERP DI DERP SNURR HURR that blizzard shat themselves on their head. -.-

but still ....

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Danarchy said:

Okay, the derp factor in this thread has gone off the fucking deep end.

Okay, the derp factor in this thread has gone off the fucking deep end.


Bears repeating

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John Smith said:

Bears repeating


I'm with you, bro *derp*

...

Ahem...

...

I'd be very interested to see exactly how do software companies account for "resale rights" in their pricing policy -if they do-.

The way I see it, a company must price its products accordingly in order to get 100% of their costs back with the first sale, and cover any capital losses caused by the missing sales due to the second-hand market. Once a software is sold, it seldom generates plusvalues/capital gains unless you also sell support or addons for it.

IMHO, this should not be viewed as a capital loss at all, assuming that those who sell their second-hand copies don't actually pirate them (aka keep using the software themselves AND sell the software to someone else): the total number of users will stay constant no matter how much second-hand resale occurs (of course, that is only true in a perfect market with zero piracy, where every currently active user can be viewed as a regularly purchased license).

So if companies have a legitimate reason to be pissed about, it's software piracy, not second hand copying. Such legal iters are just misleading and hurtful for the industry as a whole.

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I doubt the physical form of software itself (the cd, the packaging, etc) has that much effect on the price when compared to digital distribution: Developing the distribution platform, providing bandwidth and support, etc. isn't exactly cheap either. It's different when you have small companies doing crude digital distribution by e-mail or personal websites or rapidshare or whatever, but Steam is hardly cheap and Valve is certain to get its royalties.

If there is one thing that would be beneficial for digital distribution it's that it centers the distribution to only a few companies who also don't need to buy the products beforehand themselves, thus decreasing the risk the distributors are facing. Compare this to small private companies who need to buy their stock (physical games) and then sell that stock for profit before they can get new stock. If they fail to sell then they're sooner or later going to face bankruptcy. This also decreases their initiative for lowering prices, because even if they sell more it won't help if they're selling at a loss.

On the other hand if the physical distributor is a large company like Amazon they'll eventually get the pressure to clear out inventory of old items that no one wants so that they're able to get new stock: They have the money, but they don't have the space, so they need to put the literal shit on sale to get space. This is the only real benefit when it comes to pricing that physical distributors may have.

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