Please explain how that would put devs out of business. Ever since media has existed people have continued to claim that x would kill off y. "Oh noes radio will kill record sales", "Video tapes will cost the industry its lively hood!", "Digital sales will cripple used game market!", "Used media stores are the scourge of the planet! They cost sales!" etc.
I mean by your logic, things like video tapes, radios, tvs, discs, jump drives, all digital media ever should be removed from the market, and our only source of entertainment should be movie theaters, live concerts, and physical copies on tape/disc. No one should be allowed access to digital version, no one should be allowed to transfer ownership of media, every piece of content ever should require an account of some sort where you MUST be authenticated as the sole owner of your media and so on.
Nice. Sounds wonderful doesn't it?
Reselling of digital subscriptions will do the same thing that reselling of physical media did when it first popped up, nothing but drive sales further as it helps replace piracy.
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Just as a note: digital sales killed PC used game market and newspapers are in big decline since internet, especially now with all those tablets. Those "radio will kill" or "video tapes will kill" didn't work because of exclusivity - radio doesn't play all songs, and video tapes comes much later after cinema première.
But you're probably right about games - being able to give them away those steam games would reduce piracy at least a bit, and might improve sales ("hey, borrow me that GAME of yours, I'll check if it's good for buying or not").
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While digital sales played a roll in killing used games on the PC, the much more influential killer was in fact devs moving to more stringent DRM, IE linking games to accounts. This came about before digital sales took over.
As with your example with newspapers, there are people that prefer the physical paper over the digital, same with games, but newspaper companies have in response to the digital revolution, changed their business model, something the media industries have been fighting. Instead of fighting the digital age, they have EMBRACED IT. So while physical paper subscriptions have declined sharply, digital "premium" subscriptions have made for higher profit margins. Allowing users to get the same exact news and articles on their PC, or to move it to items like the kindle.
Its a common theme throughout the ages. As new technology is developed, people have to adapted or get left behind. Even a super large, multinational, trillion dollar a year industry has to adapt or get left behind.
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True, that's also DRM fault. But this DRM goes hand-to-hand with digital sales. There's only greenmangaming that allows not-steamworks games to be returned (and that's not resale), or there is someone else?
So, did digital age killed those old newspapers or didn't (since first you make it like it didn't, then you say it did)?
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Digital didnt kill newspapers like most people though it would.
Have newspapers been as profitable as they were back in the 50's? No. Have some smaller papers gone under? Yes. However, to say that the newspaper industry is dead would be a lie. Those papers that adapted and changed to embrace technology and by connection the digital age have survived and allowed greater access to its service.
In essence, newspapers suffered, but others changed and managed to stay around.
As for your first question. As far as I know, its only gmg that allows you to trade back its titles. The only reason it doesnt allow trade back of the steam titles is because it has no control on that. IF however steam allowed trade back or key revokation, IE removing the key's used state on your account to its default "unused" state then GMG COULD give refunds/trade ins on those titles. But thats beyound the scope of the topic.
GMG shows that you can take a digital item like a game, allow users to buy them, play them, and then return/trade them in, all while staying profitable AND giving devs their cut. The big push to remove the used game market is a continued effort to maximize profits and to stiff the customer. IMO anyway.
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It wont have much of an effect on multilayer games as everyone that plays that game needs to have a license but this is not the case of single player games for example.
I will illustrate this with Skyrim. I bought the game when it first came out and got bored with it after a couple of weeks. I could then gift to one of my friends who plays it for another couple of weeks and then he gifts it to another friend and so fourth.
I would summarize the effects of free trade with used PC games not as a dev or business killer but instead a funnel. We would see less and less high profile single player games and this would more often then not kill certain genres such as high profile Point and clickers and high profile deep story RPGs for example. It would also probably affect the COOP genre. This could also lead developers to rework games into multiplayer which could and have destroyed a number of franchises.
A more scary outlook on the situation if this get forced we might see games completely move away from any kind of payments for games and in game as everything paid people will gift and sell their copies to new potential buyers. Instead this might lead into 100% advertised supported games, for example each 15-20 min in game you need to watch 5mins of commercials.
This might or might not happen as I have described but it is what I think out from the facts provided. Finaly i would like to point out for everyone that please refrain from drawing any -conclusions- (theorizing is of course fine) before anything happens.
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Explain to me then why this scenario has not happened in the context of console games where you have been and still can free trade and resell your games? MP and SP. According to your scenario, the console market would be a ghost town now after having free trade for decades.
Inversely, with the rise of more stringent DRM for the PC platform, wouldnt then sales of PC games and PC game selection improve? Not withstanding the perceived affects of piracy since thats an entirely different conversation, and because consoles have had and still do have forms of piracy as well.
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The thing is that you can potentially give away / sell games with click instead of all the hassle that is selling or giving away a console game as a physical copy, it's a service problem, which could easily be resolved via the internet (much like the pirate issue).
And we have already seen the funnel effect I was speaking about in the console market. More and more titles tend to market multiplayer games more drastically then single player games with a few exceptions of course. Also as I stated the developers are forced to implement multiplayer in games that doesn't need it or just purely suffer because of it, examples of this include ME3 and Bioshock 2.
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TVs killed radio, and yet radio stations still exist. They just adapted. Instead of having a single store selling radios the size of fridges you have radios for sell at places like walmart. Not complicated.
I have the song though :P and was waiting for someone to post it up.
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TV didn't killed radio because they offer different things. You can play radio as something more background-y, while TV requires your attention. For example, there's not much problem with radio in car, you can't watch TV there (and drive). And that's why radio didn't died.
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Plenty of people listen to tv in the background. I seldom watch tv at all to be honest, mostly because what is on is crap but thats irrelevant.
I was born long after radio's heyday so I dont really know what it was like back then, I hear it was actually much better but I digress. The point is that radio is still around even though people were convinced that TV, movies, mp3s, video tapes, cassette players, and so on would be the "final nail" in the coffin.
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And now Gabe is telling people that Windows 8 and entire Microsoft is root of entire evil just because they integrate shop with OS and will take fee from each sale... obviously Gabe do not approve it as only he can take fee for selling stuff :x
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I think his point was that up until know everyone simply could release software without the need of getting approval for it from Microsoft - I also read that the fees are extremely high (some indie developer wanted to release a patch for a game to fix one bug where a few people couldn't start the game and was asked to pay 300000$ for it - might be an urban legend though)
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:o Not sure what is concept behind Win 8 store, but in APPhub - WP7/Xbox dev zone you just have to pay 100$ per yearly subscription and for that period all releases are free (new apps and all patches).
Idea of MS approval is not that bad.. but their requirements for apps are idiotic and most professional software cannot meet them.. seriously AutoCad, photoshop or even MS Visual studio beeing completly loaded and ready to work in few seconds?... Mwhahaa...
plus time for entire certification process which surprisingly takes MS tons of time - simple apps for WP are certified for at least 6/7 days.. I don't dare to think about period required to certify advanced software :o
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Yes, you're right especially when people keep insisting you own the games you buy from retail outlets. One of the main reasons people keep batting on about how steam is bad. People still don't get it.
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Steam IS bad, but not because you're only getting a licence for a game you buy there, that's the same everywhere and has always been. But because you don't even have access to these game licences without a subscription to Steam. And that is very bad, because Valve can do whatever the fuck they want with this subscription and they do as you could see with the SSA change recently.
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Well, when you buy game without any internet service that you must use to play then you "own" game - only way to make you stop playing it is physically coming to your home and taking your dvd or cd or whatever. And with Steam, they only have to write "you've done something we didn't like and we won't tell you what it was" and poof, all your money is gone.
That's what whole "you own retail game and you don't own them on steam" dispute is all about.
Ps.: And with new agreement you don't even buy licence...
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While true, the chances of steam going belly up is very slim to say the least. Also, Valve has said that if they do actually go belly up/ its the end of the world/w.e, that they would release a patch that would remove its DRM/online requirement for its customers and their games. How much stock you will put into a company's unoffical promise... I dont know, me I dont put a lot of stock into such things. shrugs
Want to be protected? Get 2 HDDs big enough to store your entire steam library. Mirror them and keep one in a safe place. Also have your games with you, steam goes out and doesnt patch out its DRM, a thoughtful user/hacker will release a cracked steam client which is already a thing...
Profit!
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Who, steam? Devs? Users?
Steam and devs can release their own patches. Steam especially can release a patch to remove its DRM layer.
As for Users, thats kind of the assumption essentially. If in the event steam gives its users the big middle finger and shuts down, its not that complicated to get a fake steam client. I know there was one made during the release of Half-life 1 that I saw. Im sure that with steam's 10? 20? million users suddenly in need of a fake steam client, "the scene" will be more the happy and able to help. While not ideal, it certainly could be an option.
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Actually, it's not lifetime.
"Valve hereby grants, and you accept, a limited, terminable, non-exclusive license and right to use the Software for your personal use."
From what I understand, that means that theoretically, Valve could close Steam tomorrow and say they don't owe you shit.
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Well yeah, that's a protection clause. If Valve was to go out of business or collapse for whatever reason, or if it was acquired by some other company, they couldn't possibly deal with the flood of lawsuits from millions of gamers who lost their libraries.
This isn't anything new or unique and it's been done by every retailer forever with any subscription-based service or one that requires a constantly available aspect on the part of the company.
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That...doesn't work. IANAL, but they just have it there to be able to argue about something in court. Courts do not like one-sided agreements, and it probably won't fly - they can write whatever they want in the EULA, but the law system has to acknowledge it, and I can't see that happening.
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But you can't go to court :P You must go to arbitrary Valve choose who will decide if your case is worth checking. And WHEN he decide it isn't Valve gives him his money and you can't do anything.
At least that's how Valve imagined it will work. Can't wait for someone to go against them, to see how it will look in the end...
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Valve didn't do the Lichtenstein thing and I have no clue what that guy is talking about. So far, none of the digital retailers have actually done anything since a court ruling itself doesn't change how corporations have to operate. No new laws have come into effect and there's no enforcement body telling them to change how they operate.
Eventually if that does happen, retailers will just sell games/music/movies/etc. in the EU using a strictly subscription-based model or something of that nature, which would fuck over consumers even more. Hell, if they make every "game" f2p with only one level available and the rest being DLC, they can get around the ruling.
No company is going to sit back and let their profits die out without fighting it, and if that fails, without changing the nature of their business.
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The good news is competition may actually force a re-think by valve at some point, as the competitive advantage that other digital distribution systems can offer is re-sale. The bad news is that it would be difficult to come up with a workable model for steam... so definitely not going to happen anytime soon :C
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All these "subscription" replies mean nothing. In the EU it's been ruled that you own the software rights and it is transferable. I would like to see Valve worm out of it.
I personally would sell some of the games on my account or simply give them away. Some of them I don't like or bother with.
This will NOT put developers out of business (I'm a student games programmer and I know how much of the industry works). If you think that, then I wonder how you explain how the industry, built upon the back of tradable games long before digital rights management, became the biggest entertainment industry in the world?
Trading and selling software is a right and it will not ruin the industry. If you think that you've bought the lies put out by the PUBLISHERS, who have a vested interest in making sure you can't resell games and have to buy new all the time.
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No need for them to worm out of it. As an EU citizien, you have the right to resell your digital games. However, Valve is not forced to technically offer you the ability to do so
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It's against the TOS to sell/share an account and since an account is no licence this is not beeing overridden by EU law :/
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The industry would adapt. For example imagine that a majority of new AAA titles would be subscription based even though it would not even have multiplayer mode and it would require always on access to the internet like diablo 3.
What would you do then? Not buy the game? Even now people say that games are too expensive or have drm and they still buy them.
It would change for the worse for us gamers. We would not have any games to play for free after buying the copy but would have to pay subscription for all of them if we want to play ( think onlive - pay for playing )
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if this happened it would destroy the internet software sales and i should think would lead to the end of PC gaming so imo its a very bad idea
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Oh, please. Don't bring up that tired old argument.
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consoles have been, and still are able to trade in and buy used copies. Have for decades. And yet its the largest segment of the gaming industry. That alone invalidates your opinion. Add to that, that most PC games require some form of online account that makes your purchase tied to you and ONLY you, and that most purchases of the PC segment, are digital...
By your logic, console devs would be out of business and PC would be the only market left.
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Why the hell would it? You could sell PC games prior to the stupid VIP codes and such. Hell you cna still sell any game that doesn't tie to a STeam or Origin account.
Gaming was built on preowned titles for god sake. IT isn't going to ruin it at all.
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I like this video. Need that here, and now! I would remove a ton of games off my library, and keep games that I really enjoy, but that's why they have free weekend games try before you buy the full version, but not every single game. Thanks for the link :)
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Steam should allow games that are more than a year old to be resold. It will gives us more freedom and it won't cannibalize their sales.
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6 months by game standards is ancient. A simple system that would check the age of the game, and the amount of time its been on the account would be acceptable. Ideally though, a trully free and open system would be good. IE I buy COD200 the day its released, slog through it in 4hrs, I can then resell it back the same day.
And its already mentioned that used sales =! less sales for devs.
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It would be like you buy a game, finish it and then say : "I don't like it, I wan't my money back!"
Some websites like greenmangaming.com do offer trade-ins(a percentage of the actual buying price) for some games even after you buy and play it.
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True, but that's still only an excuse by the publishers who use the digital distribution for their own benefits. On these CDs/DVDs is nothing else than what they deliver to you per download now. And it has always only been a licence. That's why EU court has ruled this way, but Valve and Co. don't care. They force you under some subscription so that you can't even access the licences you bought from them if they don't want you to and they can force you to whatever they want.
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The thing is most stores and companies have a "satisfied or your money back" guarantee, but video game resellers don't and everybody is okay with that. Even buying a movie - and that's only two hours - can be refunded.
While there could be a potential to have some companies go bankrupt, on the other hand it would improve the product we see. If a game lasts 6 hours and you're left thinking "well, that was a waste of time", you're gonna bring it back. However, if the game is like Skyrim and even after a month (well past the refunding date) you still aren't tired of it, you'll keep it.
If you like playing online with other people, you obviously need the game somewhere around you to do that. And even if the game is 8 hours long, if it was extremely good, you'll uninstall it but keep it around in case you ever want to play it again. If you're like me and your hard drive is completely filled with games, you'll also keep them around because you don't have enough space to install them now.
Overall, allowing the resale of used games will force companies to make better games. And even if we put a silly clause like "you can only get half of what you paid", that'll still be a step in the right direction.
Now, one could say that you'd be able to keep your game on your hard-drive and you can give back the CD. That's true, but the same thing happens with movies and nobody is saying anything. I'm sure there's some sort of DRM in movies, but otherwise you can buy the DVD, burn it into your computer (or into another DVD if you have two players) and bring it back to the store. Yet, again, nobody is saying anything about that.
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The thing is though is that most games on steam require steam, go figure. So if you remove a game from your account, regardless of if you kept a copy or not, you wouldnt be able to play or use the game without getting cracks or what have you. If a person is willing to go that far then they are already willing to torrent the media anyway which is illegal/etc. If steam copy protects the game files, this would dissuade most of the little kiddies. I say copyprotect because we still want to be able to change the files for mods and stuff :P. Green man Gaming has a system in place that allows trade-ins of its digital goods. They seem to make a decent amount of profit, so there is obviously already a system that allows this.
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Digital must be equal to the physical. Laws, rights, etc. They just want to be off of the problems the other markets have.
You paid your money - you got your copy, as subscription. End of story. They want this to be this way. But is it right?
You can't own the rights on the soft, as long as this soft was developed by a company which own the rights. But we must have rights to do whatever we want with our copy. Why not? As with table in your kitchen, your hat, your car, parrot, cat, last panties :P
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The publisher and/or developer can choose to set whatever stipulations on how they wish to market their product that they want. It is their right to set the terms for the proposed business transaction (in this case the sale of lifetime subscription rights to their digital product). It is your right and mine to either accept those terms or not. If enough of us refuse (and I'm not talking about a handful of whiners on the internet swearing they won't buy the next Half-Life, I mean Call of Duty X selling half as many copies as projected) then they will change (there is no purpose for a business if it is not generating income for the owners and employees).
That said, there is nothing objectively sinister or "wrong" about selling subscriptions rather than a definite right to a copy of a product.
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That is an inaccurate comparison.
When you sign the EULA, you are agreeing to be bound by those terms. You are acknowleding that you have paid for a license to play their game, and in recent verbage a lifetime subscription it seems. This is enforced by contract law I believe. If nothing else it is maintained by the societal expectation of individuals honoring their agreements. Being able to expect that others in society will be bound by the agreements that they make is a basic element in maintaining the delicate social order.
If you don't think social order is important, I cannot argue with you. However I suspect that you would start finding it quite unappealing if your boss decided (without penalty) to not honor the contract he has with you, or if your landlord spontaneously decided to kick you out, or any number of lesser inconveniences that would arise from not being able to trust anyone's verbal or written word.
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Have you ever actually taken time to read an EULA? EULA by the way stands for End User Liscense Agreement, not Agreement of Purchase and Sale. When you 'buy' software you don't own the software, you are just being given liscense to use that software.
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Apparently that's from the European Court of Justice and it's great because it's the highest court in the European Union. I guess this means you can bring the case before them if Steam refuses to transfer your copy to someone else - or refuses to give you the right to do so.
Then again, they probably won't budge. There's just so many things to take into account when trying to sue someone/something in another country that chances are, if you threaten to sue, they won't take you seriously.
This could apply to our european resellers like GamersGate and GreenManGaming though, but seeing most of their games are DRM-free anyway (and on GamersGate you can give the downloader to someone else), there's no need to go through them, just promise you'll stop playing.
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The thing I don't like about Steam is that when I don't have internet I can't play my games offline, it's always the same problem, I try to play offline and the steam program doesn't allows me. It really annoys me!
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For those who always reminds about the EULA. Okay, guys.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 multiplayer. How can you play a multiplayer in mw3? - you MUST buy a game through steam, retail store, etc. Then you must accept the Steam SSA, then MW3 EULA. Only then you can download the game through the Steam app and start playing. Is there another way? Not like this, though.
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Forget about selling, the only thing I really wish I was able to do was gift the Steam games I don't play anymore to my friends. :(
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Among physical goods, there is a difference in quality, whether perceived or real, between used goods and new goods. A used game may have scuffs and scratches a new game does not. A used car is always less than the new car, even if the quality is identical.
This quality differential does not exist in the world of digital distribution as there is no difference between a new copy of a game and a used one. The terms new and used cannot even be used in such a way. There is nothing to wear out.
It's a moot point to me because of the abundance of sales. I have no demand to trade or buy used when there are so many sales.
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A used game is not the same as new in 100% of cases because it is not in its original shrink-wrap. For whatever reason, this has value to the consumer. This is, based on experience, worth at least $5 in value.
A new digital game is indistinguishable from a "used" digital game 100% of the time.
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A used car is always less than the new car, even if the quality is identical.
A car is considered used as soon as you drive it off the lot.
If I drive a car out of a dealership, across the street and refill any top up the tank, I'd get considerably less than I paid. What (in)perceptible difference is there?
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+1
There is no incentive to actually buy from steam, when you can get the EXACT same product from someone else, for probably cheaper.
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Hey there,
I remember that a month ago i read some ting that said that digital property must be able to be resold.
I cant find the news article anymore.
This is interesting because steam should change there policy making your played games giftable.
This would be awesome for this site as well.
Any toughs or links? I want some more info.
Thanks!
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