Sure. And second hand sales of DVDs and Blurays steals money from film production companies. And used car sales steals money from car manufacturers. And used book sales steals money from book publishers and authors.
There is a market for second-hand merchandise for lots of things.
I'm sorry, but your argument is completely invalid.
I don't think you'll be shocked to learn I'm opposed to used sales for those items as well.
Because EA's idiocy cuts down on piracy of their games?
Wait, no it doesn't.
Great, I didn't say it was successful but it very well could have worked.
Gabe Newell, co-founder of Valve, has said that piracy is a service problem, in that piracy can be stemmed by offering a better service than the pirates do. Forcing legitimate customers to always be online or else be unable to start games nor save progress while ingame is NOT superior service.
I don't spend money for service, I spend money for content. Piracy is for the most part a problem with the pirate themselves, not the hard-working men and women who put the product on the market.
Also SOPA was for the most part the beginnings of a good idea, though it stepped a touch too far. People who are vehemently opposed to any and all anti-piracy legislation since irritate me greatly.
I don't think you'll be shocked to learn I'm opposed to used sales for those items as well.
Have you ever given something of yours to someone else, or else traded anything in for money or store credit?
If so, then you're a great big fat hypocrite.
And anyway, the problem with Gamestop selling used games isn't that the store encourages second-hand sales. The problem is that people are stupid enough to sell a $60 game back to Gamestop for $20. That's stupid. Gamestop's used games are those that people willingly sell back to them. If people kept their games, then Gamestop wouldn't have anything used ones to sell.
So don't blame Gamestop that people are stupid and willing to sell their stuff for pennies on the dollar.
Also, if you're against the sale of used cars, then I guess you're one of those people who got a fancy new car for your 16th birthday on your parents' dime. Do you know how much I bought my last car for? $5,000 for an '00 Toyota Camry with 125k miles on it. It's a great car, it runs well, and I didn't fucking have to pay $30,000 for it. I never once had to pay monthly payments on it.
EDIT: My in-laws moved houses and didn't need some of their furniture, so they gave us one of their chests-of-drawers, and my wife wanted a setee that used to belong to her grandmother before she died. But I guess that's stealing money from furniture makers.
You might not say it's the same thing, but it is. It's trading stuff that used to belong to other people.
So I guess when people die, all their stuff should be burned in a fire.
And I guess if I want to buy more games for my old (originally bought by me) Super Nintendo because I took it to my family's condo at the lake and I only have 4 or 5 games for it there, then I suppose I'm just shit out of luck, aren't I?[/edit]
Ribs, aren't you the "Master of freebie grabbing™"? Does taking someone else's spare game not take money away from the game industry?
Er, it doesn't. A free game is, more often than not, provided directly from the publisher. Hence, what the hell does it have to do with Used Games or Game Piracy?
Also I really couldn't care less about the games industry as a whole I care about the publishers producing the content.
Er, it doesn't. A free game is, more often than not, provided directly from the publisher. Hence, what the hell does it have to do with Used Games or Game Piracy?
People spending their time on work that they get little to nothing in return for.
Also I really couldn't care less about the games industry as a whole I care about the publishers producing the content.
The publishers are part of the industry.
Also, does that include the publishers and the developers? Why care about the publishers if it's the developers who make the games? The publishers don't produce the content; they market and publish it. All the publisher does is press the discs, print the box art, pay for marketing, and find a distributor.
And then, what about the distributors who work to get the physical games to the stores? You don't care about them because it only relieves the publishers of having to micro-manage getting specific numbers of thousands of copies of individual games into tens of thousands of individual stores.
What about the stores? I mean, they only have to worry about stocking too little of this or too much of that. They only have to pay thousands (perhaps even tens of thousands) of dollars every month just to keep the lights on and the doors open. They only have to absolutely be in a prime physical location to sell their wares or else face going out of business because of that point alone.
What about the employees of these stores? They only have to work odd hours at possibly part-time-only wages and on holidays, while putting up with uptight bosses, people who take games off shelves and put them back in the wrong places or not at all, and parents who leave their kids in a store to be babysat by the employees, among other things.
Cutting out the physical media and physical stores, what about the online stores? They only work their asses off trying to get licensing to sell the games. They only have to pay a buttload of money for bandwidth, and computers to store the data. They only have to play middle-man for everything concerning support for the games.
No, the publishers are the only ones who do any work; but hey, if they're willing to spend their time away from their families to make something that earns them no money, then that's fine.
There's more to the industry than the publishers. And besides that, to play a game for free whether the publisher knows you are or doesn't know you are makes no difference to whether they can pay their employees.
EDIT: And making sure that hardware and software absolutely won't work without an internet connection, when the application of the software has little need for it, doesn't ensure that the publisher makes more money; it just makes customers mad.
Yeah... all I gotta say is that if used games weren't a thing, I wouldn't have ever been able to play *deep breath*
Curse of Monkey Island
Escape from Monkey Island
Grim Fandango
Full Throttle
The Dig
Sam and Max Hit the Road
KoTOR
KoTOR II
Dark Forces
Dark Forces II:
Jedi Knight: Jedi Outcast
Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy
Republic Commando
Battlefront
Star Wars: Empire at War
Age of Empires II
Because by the time I got into most these games, they weren't being sold by the companies that made them anymore. And with Age of Empires II, I lent it to a friend who never gave it back and I was a kid with two dollars a month allowance money. The original had been a present and I didn't want to tell anyone that I'd gone and lost the game, so the only way I could replace it was by getting a used copy.
I'd say that in the interest of recycling, selling used things is essential for commerce to work. And if things can only ever be used by the original owner, so much gaming history is going to be lost when the publishers don't sell the games anymore and people want to dive back into older games. This era will just be this big blank page for Microsoft.
I don't spend money for service, I spend money for content. Piracy is for the most part a problem with the pirate themselves, not the hard-working men and women who put the product on the market.
You don't spend money for service?
You don't spend money on Steam games because their service includes automatic patch updates, achievements, or game communities? You don't spend money on GOG games because their service includes being DRM-free and providing extras like manuals and soundtracks? You don't buy downloadable games from online stores so that they can keep your installation files handy on their site and free you from needing to keep track of it?
You don't avoid buying through Origin because of problems with their service?
The content beyond the game itself is part of the service. You do so pay for that. The company who you buy the game from certainly pays money in order to give it to you.
Most people who pirate a game would likely buy the game legitimately if the service in addition to the game encouraged them to do so. Pirated games don't get automatic patches, unlockable achievements, or the ability to store the installation files on the cloud for free. On the other hand, pirated games don't force you to be on the internet all the dang time for even the single-player-only portion to work.
For every argument and study that shows that used games hurt publishers, there's another that says they don't. Simply saying that "used sales are bad" does not give anyone the moral high ground because it's not been proven by any stretch of the mark.
The fact of the matter is, if the next XBox prevents used games, then the console will die quite spectacularly. Used games are cheaper than full-priced games at launch, and not everyone has enough disposable income to constantly buy brand new games all the time.
As well as this, the sheer inconvenience of DRM and online passes and whatnot means that people who pirate games are getting a better service, so why would they stop? If a console forces people to be online, people will not want it because a console that DOESN'T force them to be online is the better, more stable and more convenient option.
Microsoft are going about this all wrong, and it's going to bite them in the ass. Hard.
Okay, here's is the ultimate solution to the entire used game debacle.
Most sales of new games occur within six months. It's the reason Ubisoft gave to DRM in their own games anyway, to stall piracy for six months (hahahaha, funny Ubisoft).
Also, in order to determine whether a game is used or not, the game has to connect to a used game database first, right? It's so that the database can link the game to the player.
So, here's the solution to it all.
Aside from storing an identification number on the game itself, store the date the game went gold or at least the estimated release date. Then, set an estimated expiration date, after which it won't try to connect with the Internet anymore.
Now how it works is like this. You insert the disk, and then it checks if there are any tickets for this game stored on this console system. If that's not the case, it checks on the Internet if the console is authorized to play this game, that is, if you wiped your console, it just checks the console's ID on the Internet and looks if it matches with the game's ID. It will also see if there has been an account transfer, since consoles can break within six months of a game's purchase, so that you're not completely fucked. If that's still not the case it checks if the game already has been registered. Is that's the case, reject the game, otherwise, register the game to the console.
In either of the cases when the server has accepted the copy, it will download a ticket for the game to be stored on the console. This ticket will also contain the date when it expires, so that it automatically gets freed once it's of no use anymore.
This way, you can still support the used game industry while still making money off new games. Like I said, it's very unlikely new sales happen after six months.
I'm just saying but there has been developers who managed to stall piracy of their games for months without DRM. My example here is Spyro Year of the Dragon which I've read about this one in the cutting room floor so that's how i know about it. Insommiac Games instead of putting something that usually backfires on people who actually bought the game instead thought of tricking the pirates by putting traps like for example, Zoe the Fairy will stop Spyro early in the game with a sorta creepy forth wall breaking line which you can watch at youtube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZinR10DC3-Q
The video shows that if they managed to somehow make their way to the last boss fight, after around one attack at The Sorceress, the game goes back to the very start with every egg and gem that Spyro collected gone.
I think they would SEVERELY cut down on the outrage if they did make it a 6 month plan. "You can't play a used game until 6 months after it's release date".
As someone who doesn't have all the disposable income in the world(and prefers PC), I'm already used to waiting at least this long to play new games anyway(usually. I have sprung for new releases a few times). I'm sure that most others who legally play new games, and are in the same boat financially, wouldn't have THAT big of an issue with it either.
EDIT: ...and no, I haven't purchased a used game in 4 years. I prefer to wait 'til the price goes down.
If this is true, I'm wondering why Mircosoft is making so many mistakes and expect to beat Sony and Nintendo? Insulting people on Twitter who don't agree with this bullshit, Always online DRM and now it's extremely overpriced and taking the whole in my opinion rip off that is Xbox live and using it for now to just play the damn thing? Are you freaking kidding me?
Are you SURE you mean Nintendo? Because, as far as I know, Nintendo has mostly been known as lower specs and slow playing. Because they use lower specs than speculated next gens, they can actually afford the console, therefore afford taking their time with their first-party games. And they slow play like in poker, although mostly to warrant quality over quantity.
People always go about quality, yet they also want quantity. Problem is, it doesn't go hand in hand. You can't get quantity without loss of quality. It's what killed the Tony Hawk series.
I played around with NintendoLand on a WiiU at Best Buy a couple of weeks ago, and I kept wanting to look at the TV but had to always stare at the controller screen to aim at things. It felt like having a big TV screen would be totally pointless for the one with the controller. I was not impressed, because the controller feels like just another gimmick.
Also, I'm getting tired of controlling a dumb looking Mii.
Comments
I don't think you'll be shocked to learn I'm opposed to used sales for those items as well.
Great, I didn't say it was successful but it very well could have worked.
I don't spend money for service, I spend money for content. Piracy is for the most part a problem with the pirate themselves, not the hard-working men and women who put the product on the market.
Also SOPA was for the most part the beginnings of a good idea, though it stepped a touch too far. People who are vehemently opposed to any and all anti-piracy legislation since irritate me greatly.
Have you ever given something of yours to someone else, or else traded anything in for money or store credit?
If so, then you're a great big fat hypocrite.
And anyway, the problem with Gamestop selling used games isn't that the store encourages second-hand sales. The problem is that people are stupid enough to sell a $60 game back to Gamestop for $20. That's stupid. Gamestop's used games are those that people willingly sell back to them. If people kept their games, then Gamestop wouldn't have anything used ones to sell.
So don't blame Gamestop that people are stupid and willing to sell their stuff for pennies on the dollar.
Also, if you're against the sale of used cars, then I guess you're one of those people who got a fancy new car for your 16th birthday on your parents' dime. Do you know how much I bought my last car for? $5,000 for an '00 Toyota Camry with 125k miles on it. It's a great car, it runs well, and I didn't fucking have to pay $30,000 for it. I never once had to pay monthly payments on it.
EDIT: My in-laws moved houses and didn't need some of their furniture, so they gave us one of their chests-of-drawers, and my wife wanted a setee that used to belong to her grandmother before she died. But I guess that's stealing money from furniture makers.
You might not say it's the same thing, but it is. It's trading stuff that used to belong to other people.
So I guess when people die, all their stuff should be burned in a fire.
And I guess if I want to buy more games for my old (originally bought by me) Super Nintendo because I took it to my family's condo at the lake and I only have 4 or 5 games for it there, then I suppose I'm just shit out of luck, aren't I?[/edit]
Stupid.
Er, it doesn't. A free game is, more often than not, provided directly from the publisher. Hence, what the hell does it have to do with Used Games or Game Piracy?
Also I really couldn't care less about the games industry as a whole I care about the publishers producing the content.
The publishers are part of the industry.
Also, does that include the publishers and the developers? Why care about the publishers if it's the developers who make the games? The publishers don't produce the content; they market and publish it. All the publisher does is press the discs, print the box art, pay for marketing, and find a distributor.
And then, what about the distributors who work to get the physical games to the stores? You don't care about them because it only relieves the publishers of having to micro-manage getting specific numbers of thousands of copies of individual games into tens of thousands of individual stores.
What about the stores? I mean, they only have to worry about stocking too little of this or too much of that. They only have to pay thousands (perhaps even tens of thousands) of dollars every month just to keep the lights on and the doors open. They only have to absolutely be in a prime physical location to sell their wares or else face going out of business because of that point alone.
What about the employees of these stores? They only have to work odd hours at possibly part-time-only wages and on holidays, while putting up with uptight bosses, people who take games off shelves and put them back in the wrong places or not at all, and parents who leave their kids in a store to be babysat by the employees, among other things.
Cutting out the physical media and physical stores, what about the online stores? They only work their asses off trying to get licensing to sell the games. They only have to pay a buttload of money for bandwidth, and computers to store the data. They only have to play middle-man for everything concerning support for the games.
No, the publishers are the only ones who do any work; but hey, if they're willing to spend their time away from their families to make something that earns them no money, then that's fine.
There's more to the industry than the publishers. And besides that, to play a game for free whether the publisher knows you are or doesn't know you are makes no difference to whether they can pay their employees.
EDIT: And making sure that hardware and software absolutely won't work without an internet connection, when the application of the software has little need for it, doesn't ensure that the publisher makes more money; it just makes customers mad.
Curse of Monkey Island
Escape from Monkey Island
Grim Fandango
Full Throttle
The Dig
Sam and Max Hit the Road
KoTOR
KoTOR II
Dark Forces
Dark Forces II:
Jedi Knight: Jedi Outcast
Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy
Republic Commando
Battlefront
Star Wars: Empire at War
Age of Empires II
Because by the time I got into most these games, they weren't being sold by the companies that made them anymore. And with Age of Empires II, I lent it to a friend who never gave it back and I was a kid with two dollars a month allowance money. The original had been a present and I didn't want to tell anyone that I'd gone and lost the game, so the only way I could replace it was by getting a used copy.
I'd say that in the interest of recycling, selling used things is essential for commerce to work. And if things can only ever be used by the original owner, so much gaming history is going to be lost when the publishers don't sell the games anymore and people want to dive back into older games. This era will just be this big blank page for Microsoft.
You don't spend money for service?
You don't spend money on Steam games because their service includes automatic patch updates, achievements, or game communities? You don't spend money on GOG games because their service includes being DRM-free and providing extras like manuals and soundtracks? You don't buy downloadable games from online stores so that they can keep your installation files handy on their site and free you from needing to keep track of it?
You don't avoid buying through Origin because of problems with their service?
The content beyond the game itself is part of the service. You do so pay for that. The company who you buy the game from certainly pays money in order to give it to you.
Most people who pirate a game would likely buy the game legitimately if the service in addition to the game encouraged them to do so. Pirated games don't get automatic patches, unlockable achievements, or the ability to store the installation files on the cloud for free. On the other hand, pirated games don't force you to be on the internet all the dang time for even the single-player-only portion to work.
The fact of the matter is, if the next XBox prevents used games, then the console will die quite spectacularly. Used games are cheaper than full-priced games at launch, and not everyone has enough disposable income to constantly buy brand new games all the time.
As well as this, the sheer inconvenience of DRM and online passes and whatnot means that people who pirate games are getting a better service, so why would they stop? If a console forces people to be online, people will not want it because a console that DOESN'T force them to be online is the better, more stable and more convenient option.
Microsoft are going about this all wrong, and it's going to bite them in the ass. Hard.
Most sales of new games occur within six months. It's the reason Ubisoft gave to DRM in their own games anyway, to stall piracy for six months (hahahaha, funny Ubisoft).
Also, in order to determine whether a game is used or not, the game has to connect to a used game database first, right? It's so that the database can link the game to the player.
So, here's the solution to it all.
Aside from storing an identification number on the game itself, store the date the game went gold or at least the estimated release date. Then, set an estimated expiration date, after which it won't try to connect with the Internet anymore.
Now how it works is like this. You insert the disk, and then it checks if there are any tickets for this game stored on this console system. If that's not the case, it checks on the Internet if the console is authorized to play this game, that is, if you wiped your console, it just checks the console's ID on the Internet and looks if it matches with the game's ID. It will also see if there has been an account transfer, since consoles can break within six months of a game's purchase, so that you're not completely fucked. If that's still not the case it checks if the game already has been registered. Is that's the case, reject the game, otherwise, register the game to the console.
In either of the cases when the server has accepted the copy, it will download a ticket for the game to be stored on the console. This ticket will also contain the date when it expires, so that it automatically gets freed once it's of no use anymore.
This way, you can still support the used game industry while still making money off new games. Like I said, it's very unlikely new sales happen after six months.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZinR10DC3-Q
Anyway some of the traps included gems and some of the dragon eggs go missing and as shown by this video on Youtube here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZT9O62ZNQSU
The video shows that if they managed to somehow make their way to the last boss fight, after around one attack at The Sorceress, the game goes back to the very start with every egg and gem that Spyro collected gone.
You can read about it at the cutting room floor here: http://tcrf.net/Spyro:_Year_of_the_Dragon
(well okay not the only reason but one of the many reasons)
As someone who doesn't have all the disposable income in the world(and prefers PC), I'm already used to waiting at least this long to play new games anyway(usually. I have sprung for new releases a few times). I'm sure that most others who legally play new games, and are in the same boat financially, wouldn't have THAT big of an issue with it either.
EDIT: ...and no, I haven't purchased a used game in 4 years. I prefer to wait 'til the price goes down.
That didn't go over too well with consumers, and I doubt this will either.
This will help OUYA defeat Xbox. I hope other consoles model them selves on OUYA.
If this is true, I'm wondering why Mircosoft is making so many mistakes and expect to beat Sony and Nintendo? Insulting people on Twitter who don't agree with this bullshit, Always online DRM and now it's extremely overpriced and taking the whole in my opinion rip off that is Xbox live and using it for now to just play the damn thing? Are you freaking kidding me?
Sony on the other hand are saying the right things. Doing it all is another thing entirely.
People always go about quality, yet they also want quantity. Problem is, it doesn't go hand in hand. You can't get quantity without loss of quality. It's what killed the Tony Hawk series.
I played around with NintendoLand on a WiiU at Best Buy a couple of weeks ago, and I kept wanting to look at the TV but had to always stare at the controller screen to aim at things. It felt like having a big TV screen would be totally pointless for the one with the controller. I was not impressed, because the controller feels like just another gimmick.
Also, I'm getting tired of controlling a dumb looking Mii.
How badly do you have to be doing when Peter Molyneux is the voice of reason?