I love how much bias the people of Extra Credits have against Gamestop. Now I don't own stock there or shop there often, but EC failed to mention that Best buy, Amazon.com, Target, Wal-mart, Gamefly.com, Ebay, and pawn shops all sell used games. They don't mention those because Gamestop is the "evil empire that hates gamers and developers" , or whatever BS Extra Credits wants to throw at you.
I have mentioned this before but there are so many things we buy used that no one things about the "developers". Things like houses, cars, movies, books, clothes are among these.
However EC NEVER mentions this because it goes against the anti-gamestop propaganda they keep wanting to push on us. Why does EC feel its ok to buy those things used and not games.
Why shouldn't I be able to get money for the game I bought. If you are not ok with people not owning digital media why is the idea of not being able to "own" physical media not give you the same outrage. And yes I know we own it now, but the question still stands.
I Enjoy EC because it gives a lot of insight about the Gaming industry and culture, but I hate bias propaganda. And I know they will never address these issue in respect to used gaming because it means they might be wrong about a few things.
I see no reason why I can't sell my friend a game I don't want anymore. It seems silly to me that companies feel they need to profit from that transaction, its not like they were going to see any more money from that game I purchased anyway, once a game has been purchased thats it, the company got their money from it, why do they think they need more money from it? I often buy used games, the reason being I can't afford to buy them first hand (the difference in price usually being about £20).
Second thing I have to say is in the UK you can get a refund on any digital sale (no questions asked) if you return it within 7 days, which is great, that law is one of the few things keeping rights for the consumer.
Third thing, you say why aren't we complaining about steam and itunes? I wonder that too, because I have been, I have never liked either of them and never use either of them, but nobody else can seem to understand why I don't like it and my explanations seem to fall on deaf ears.
"The first-sale doctrine creates a basic exception to the copyright holder's distribution right. Once the work is lawfully sold or even transferred gratuitously, the copyright owner's interest in the material object in which the copyrighted work is embodied is exhausted. The owner of the material object can then dispose of it as he sees fit. Thus, one who buys a copy of a book is entitled to resell it, rent it, give it away, or destroy it. However, the owner of the copy of the book will not be able to make new copies of the book because the first-sale doctrine does not limit copyright owner's reproduction right."
No, they do not get anything from second-hand sales. Once they have legitimately sold the game, through a retailer or directly, the game copyright is exhausted, gone, done. You can then sell it to anyone, anywhere, for whatever you agree on as a fair price.
The fight against the used games market is a direct attack on First-Sale Doctrine. It's an attack on capitalism and the free market economy. And its one of the reasons that the games industry is in the poor shape it's in now. Greed isn't good in this case.
Jim sterling did a pretty good episode on why people don’t complain about the lack of used games on the pc, I still do think that It should be possible .
Personally I think that the solution to the used game problem would be giving publishers a cut of every used game sold.
I love how much bias the people of Extra Credits have against Gamestop. Now I don't own stock there or shop there often, but EC failed to mention that Best buy, Amazon.com, Target, Wal-mart, Gamefly.com, Ebay, and pawn shops all sell used games. They don't mention those because Gamestop is the "evil empire that hates gamers and developers" , or whatever BS Extra Credits wants to throw at you.
I have mentioned this before but there are so many things we buy used that no one things about the "developers". Things like houses, cars, movies, books, clothes are among these.
However EC NEVER mentions this because it goes against the anti-gamestop propaganda they keep wanting to push on us. Why does EC feel its ok to buy those things used and not games.
Why shouldn't I be able to get money for the game I bought. If you are not ok with people not owning digital media why is the idea of not being able to "own" physical media not give you the same outrage. And yes I know we own it now, but the question still stands.
I Enjoy EC because it gives a lot of insight about the Gaming industry and culture, but I hate bias propaganda. And I know they will never address these issue in respect to used gaming because it means they might be wrong about a few things.
They mention Gamestop (and would mention Game, their equivalent in the UK) because big retailers literally train their staff to offer the customer a used copy of the game if they come to the counter with a new one. That is the literal definition of a lost sale for publishers and is the behaviour that worries them.
Also houses, cars, movies, books and clothes all degrade in quality with use. Your game does not unless you damage the storage device (even then, if it's digital you're still fine).
Regarding the first sale doctrine, it's a good thing that the EULA you agree too on any digital product outlines how it's a licence to make use of their copy righted materials and not them out-right selling you them.
I'm very on the fence regarding used games either way, just thought I'd provide some really obvious statements for people who were running away with arguments like 'well used car sales are cool LOL'
I was actually pretty peeved about that US court decision in regards to iTunes. I don't live in the US, but companies tend to try and enforce anything that your courts say in all the countries they deal.
Which is why I was sooooo very relieved when your supreme court ruled it illegal to patent human genes.
On the topic of crazy copyright and consumer laws, you may like this series: http://everythingisaremix.info/watch-the-series/
Anyway, the returns policy issue, this is why I love my country's (Australia) consumer laws. They actually mandate that anything bought must be of reasonable quality and do as advertised. And that if it isn't, you can return it for a full refund (not store credit, money back). That is the law, and it applies to digital goods too. Companies like Apple try their damnedest not to do this and to make it difficult, but you can cut through that by being firm and reminding them you can go to the ACCC (Australian Competition and Consumer Comission).
The ultimate, overriding problem that I can see that caused the great debacle with Xbox One is the fact the consumer doesn't trust the publisher or manufacturer to not abuse the power they give themselves. People are willing to buy games full price but executives would instantly think that if they remove all other options for buying the game cheaper then everyone would buy for full price, which would push people away and with the ballooning budgets of games for no real reason then for sh*ts and giggles more games will struggle, studios will be shut down and blame will continue getting thrown in the wrong directions (I mean seriously, Dead Space 3, Tomb Raider, Crysis 3, they all sold millions but because so much money was forced into them they couldn't recoup their over the top losses and that's the fault of those with the purses, not the ones making the game).
As for Steam, I think people aren't overly concerned because the price is pretty much right, especially during sales. GRiD 2 is so far the only game I've pre-purchased off there and that was because it was a full £10 cheaper then the Xbox 360 version, included all the damned day one DLC packs and a copy of GRiD 1. I was massively disappointed with GRiD 2 but because the price was right I'm not angry. Being forced to pay more and get less content doesn't endear anyone to anything and in Codemaster's case would have pushed away a lot of customers (hell, I'm a lover of Codemaster's games but I very nearly didn't buy GRiD 2, even after waiting for it for years). If I remember rightly as well, the European Union made it legal to sell second hand digital goods as well so the legal side of things is still open.
So yes, the ultimate issue is trust, and with games giving the consumer less and less (especially some of the so called AAA games) trust is getting thin on the ground.
1. Steam "gets away with it" because it is not the only way to get games in the PC. See this for more details: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/jimquisition/7586-Why-PC-Gaming-Gets-Away-With-It
2. used games does not hurt publishers or developers because they already had the $60 of the original sale, which is a lot of money.
3. used games and borrowed games actually are free advertising for said games, since most people will buy the sequel if they liked the first one or buy another game from another studio.
This video feels hugely outdated and out of place. Are you sure you want to defend game publishers?
1. Steam "gets away with it" because it is not the only way to get games in the PC. See this for more details: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/jimquisition/7586-Why-PC-Gaming-Gets-Away-With-It
2. used games does not hurt publishers or developers because they already had the $60 of the original sale, which is a lot of money.
3. used games and borrowed games actually are free advertising for said games, since most people will buy the sequel if they liked the first one or buy another game from another studio.
This video feels hugely outdated and out of place. Are you sure you want to defend game publishers?
2. They don't get the whole 60$ and in the persepective of game design that's a drop in the ocean.
3. Is a perfectly good point and one they made. However you could just as easily have no used games and instead replace it with sales and/or regular price drops in order to get more or less the same results with more money going to the game dev. See Steam.
I really don't see them defending game publishers so much as explaining both sides and then setting out a method that allows publishers to deal with used games without being so jarring to consumers.
Not if that cash goes to buy used games, since GameStop sells FAR more used games than new, and sells used copies of particular games within 24-48 hours of said game's launch.
If someone is selling a game back in that short amount of time it's probably the sort of thing you'd demand a refund for.
Some games are shorter and do not merit re-play value. That does not entitle you to a refund in any way shape or form. Seriously.
Regardless his point about the 24-48hr window to return a game is actually less a statement of a games length or quality but more about how it's an actual behaviour people engage in purposefully. To buy a game on friday and blitz through on the weekend and cash it in on monday in order to maximise the money they get back from a used game. People do this with games like Skyrim regardless of their length because it benefits both the consumer and game stores (mostly game stores) to have this quick turn around.
Having that used copy there then more or less denies a launch week sale.
It's well worth a read honestly because it's not some publisher doing it from the perspective of wanting money. It's a dev talking about how game mechanics are affected by used games.
Wow, sometimes you guys really say things that aren't backed up by fact. Steam's DRM might be more secure than no DRM, but that's about all you can say about it. There are still TONS of pirated games that are steam editions, and it isn't taking any longer for these guys to hack the releases. Day 2 or 3 of a games release and it's available to download.
I will say that I feel really bad for the developers that put so much time money and effort into making great games and then assholes pirate the crap in under 24 hours...
For this sort of thing to work, everyone has to gain more than they lose from it. By everyone I mean retailers, publishers and consumers; if just one of those groups resists the policy it won't happen.
Think about their proposal: Gamestop would lose out because the credit they give out for a trade-in would be less valuable (since you can't buy whatever you want with it), making their customers less inclined to trade games in. So the only reason they would accept it is if they are forced to. In order to force them (and all other retailers), it has to be mandated by the platform owner and enforced via always-online DRM. And we have already seen how many customers are interested in a console with that policy.
Publishers, retailers and consumers have conflicting interests in this, so I think it is very unlikely we will see major change unless one group is forced into it; e.g. by legislation or simply not having another option open to them.
I have never understood the argument against the ability to sell a physical copy of a game you own. Generally the argument goes, "Well, publishers and developers don't make anything when you buy a used game..." to which I generally respond, "So what?".
I'm a writer. If I write a book and you buy that book you have the right to give or resell that book to anyone you want. Times are tight in the publishing industry but I don't know of any author or publisher anywhere that would begrudge you your right to sell that book you bought to someone else. (If I ever did meet a writer or a publisher like that I'd call him by his rightful name - asshole.)
Why should games be different from books or even movies or music? The easy answer is, they shouldn't. And they aren't.
One quick aside: The thought of trading a book in for "publisher credit" is, in a word, stupid. It's just another way of saying "I don't own my game ... the guy who made my game owns my game." How asinine would it be if I waltzed into a used book store to trade in a copy of Lord of the Rings for a copy of A Song of Fire and Ice only to be told I couldn't do that because they aren't owned by the same publishing company? It's _my_ book. It's _my_ game. It's a (mostly) free market; I should be able to sell it to whom I want for what the market will bear and use the proceeds as I see fit.
"But SomeNorCalGuy," you must be thinking, "What of purely digital content? Do you believe you can resell that as well?" And the answer, dear reader, is no. Let me tell you why.
The reason there isn't (and won't ever be) rioting in the streets over the inability to resell or return _digital_ content is because that is a condition the buyer acknowledges and accepts when buying digital content. It's the price we pay for convenience and discount. And (and this is important) if I don't like the conditions of the digital version _I have a choice_.
When I buy a video game for $20 in the Playstation Store instead of $30 at Target, I accept that in exchange for a $10 discount, faster load times and never needing to have/store/safeguard a physical disc, I can never resell that content. It's the same deal I make when I buy a book for $7 for my Kindle instead of $10 at Barnes and Noble or $8 for an album on iTunes instead of $12 for a CD at Best Buy.
But I have a _choice_ which is where I think Microsoft went wrong in the XB1 launch - they removed the choice factor.
Microsoft could have saved everyone a lot of piss and vinegar if they had offered gamers a choice when it came to game ownership and reselling. Digital content cannot be resold - ever. But with physical discs they could give gamers a choice: Either you treat this as every game disc ever where you need the disc in the machine in order to play the game (which has slower load times, takes up room in your living space and carries the risk of destruction) but you have no online checks to verify ownership. But you can resell the game to anyone at any time. OR you can treat the disc as a way to bypass digital downloads in lieu of a reliable highspeed connection. The disc installs the game on your system, after which you no longer need to have/store/safeguard that disc. The game cannot be resold ever (except maybe under certain circumstances: friend for 30 days, can only be resold once, etc.) and the console has to phone home every 24 hours to verify ownership. In exchange for that inconvenience you have faster load times and no need to take up space in your home with an extensive physical games library. Don't like it? Fine. Pick the other thing.
**TL;DR** Used Games Good. Digital Content Great. Microsoft Bad.
I love how much bias the people of Extra Credits have against Gamestop. Now I don't own stock there or shop there often, but EC failed to mention that Best buy, Amazon.com, Target, Wal-mart, Gamefly.com, Ebay, and pawn shops all sell used games. They don't mention those because Gamestop is the "evil empire that hates gamers and developers" , or whatever BS Extra Credits wants to throw at you.
I have mentioned this before but there are so many things we buy used that no one things about the "developers". Things like houses, cars, movies, books, clothes are among these.
However EC NEVER mentions this because it goes against the anti-gamestop propaganda they keep wanting to push on us. Why does EC feel its ok to buy those things used and not games.
Why shouldn't I be able to get money for the game I bought. If you are not ok with people not owning digital media why is the idea of not being able to "own" physical media not give you the same outrage. And yes I know we own it now, but the question still stands.
I Enjoy EC because it gives a lot of insight about the Gaming industry and culture, but I hate bias propaganda. And I know they will never address these issue in respect to used gaming because it means they might be wrong about a few things.
They mention Gamestop (and would mention Game, their equivalent in the UK) because big retailers literally train their staff to offer the customer a used copy of the game if they come to the counter with a new one. That is the literal definition of a lost sale for publishers and is the behaviour that worries them.
Also houses, cars, movies, books and clothes all degrade in quality with use. Your game does not unless you damage the storage device (even then, if it's digital you're still fine).
Regarding the first sale doctrine, it's a good thing that the EULA you agree too on any digital product outlines how it's a licence to make use of their copy righted materials and not them out-right selling you them.
I'm very on the fence regarding used games either way, just thought I'd provide some really obvious statements for people who were running away with arguments like 'well used car sales are cool LOL'
Why does the degrading in quality of houses, cars, movies, books and clothes matter? My point was all those are bought and sold with no money being given to the developer and no one gripes about that, but games somehow hurt the industry. My point was all those are sold and bought used and EC makes no comparison to those items and games. They ignore the fact.
As far as Gamestop training their staff to push used games, I can agree that can hurt but only if people think saving $3 is worth it and most of the time I am in a Gamestop its ignorant parents who are duped by that not gamers who usually support a game or company. Again they didn't mention that in the video so I can only guess that they have a general bias against Gamestop because they sell used games. If they are going to be fair about the issue they need to mention all the retailers who sell used games and don't give money to publishers.
I bought mass effect used and ME2 and 3 new but discounted so how did that used game sale hurt the publisher?
Um... hate to break it to you but getting through steam's DRM is the easiest thing in the world. That's why every pirated game comes straight off of Steam these days.
I love how much bias the people of Extra Credits have against Gamestop. Now I don't own stock there or shop there often, but EC failed to mention that Best buy, Amazon.com, Target, Wal-mart, Gamefly.com, Ebay, and pawn shops all sell used games. They don't mention those because Gamestop is the "evil empire that hates gamers and developers" , or whatever BS Extra Credits wants to throw at you.
I have mentioned this before but there are so many things we buy used that no one things about the "developers". Things like houses, cars, movies, books, clothes are among these.
However EC NEVER mentions this because it goes against the anti-gamestop propaganda they keep wanting to push on us. Why does EC feel its ok to buy those things used and not games.
Why shouldn't I be able to get money for the game I bought. If you are not ok with people not owning digital media why is the idea of not being able to "own" physical media not give you the same outrage. And yes I know we own it now, but the question still stands.
I Enjoy EC because it gives a lot of insight about the Gaming industry and culture, but I hate bias propaganda. And I know they will never address these issue in respect to used gaming because it means they might be wrong about a few things.
They mention Gamestop (and would mention Game, their equivalent in the UK) because big retailers literally train their staff to offer the customer a used copy of the game if they come to the counter with a new one. That is the literal definition of a lost sale for publishers and is the behaviour that worries them.
Also houses, cars, movies, books and clothes all degrade in quality with use. Your game does not unless you damage the storage device (even then, if it's digital you're still fine).
Regarding the first sale doctrine, it's a good thing that the EULA you agree too on any digital product outlines how it's a licence to make use of their copy righted materials and not them out-right selling you them.
I'm very on the fence regarding used games either way, just thought I'd provide some really obvious statements for people who were running away with arguments like 'well used car sales are cool LOL'
Why does the degrading in quality of houses, cars, movies, books and clothes matter? My point was all those are bought and sold with no money being given to the developer and no one gripes about that, but games somehow hurt the industry. My point was all those are sold and bought used and EC makes no comparison to those items and games. They ignore the fact.
As far as Gamestop training their staff to push used games, I can agree that can hurt but only if people think saving $3 is worth it and most of the time I am in a Gamestop its ignorant parents who are duped by that not gamers who usually support a game or company. Again they didn't mention that in the video so I can only guess that they have a general bias against Gamestop because they sell used games. If they are going to be fair about the issue they need to mention all the retailers who sell used games and don't give money to publishers.
I bought mass effect used and ME2 and 3 new but discounted so how did that used game sale hurt the publisher?
Because in the case of a car it's a demonstrably worse product. Even in the case of books there are (at least for the physical copies) reasons to prefer a new book to an old one. With a game it has literally zero effect on your experience and as a result used games thrive to a higher degree. As to why films and books never had this issue I'm not sure. If I were to hazard a guess it's because culturally people tend to 'collect' books and films to share and re-experience. The same attitude doesn't seem as dominant with people who play games however.
Saying it's ignorant parent's is really belittling the average game store customer. Very few people have reason to not take that five pound off and very, very few people do. Saying that you know a particular stores practices are problematic and then saying you think people are bias for singling them out is silly, seriously.
What difference would it make to you if you'd being able to pick up Mass Effect digitally for the same price? Absolutely none, except the publishers would have gotten money out of it. Which more or less proves my point that a really good way to deal with used games for both sides is simply to create a situation where in 'new' games are discounted or on sale. You still get to find out about Mass Effect and go on to be a loyal customer and EA earns a fiver more.
Steam is so popular and not hated because it has freaking cheap games and you can find neat bargains! Steam sales make the games cost more or less the equivalent of a used game in very good shape (disc without a scratch and whatnot). Simple as that. It's the price and the occasional sales. Contrarywise, take a look at Origin. It's like Steam (well, with EA games exclusively) yet everyone treats it as if it were that smelly retarded friend no one really wants to hang on around. Price. End of.
Has anybody got a cite on the district court case? Or at least party names/a district?
Edit: It's Capitol Records, LLC v. ReDigi, Inc. in the southern district of NY.
FWIW, District Court rulings don't really settle jack, except as between the parties. This will be appealed. Even if it isn't, it is only persuasive authority (other courts are free to ignore it if they choose).
I don't use iTunes at all, and I avoid Steam wherever possible; haven't even spent $60 total on Steam yet.
Digital ownership rights are a real issue and cannot be allowed to be dictated by industry lobby groups. I collect books and movies to share and pass on to my kids. I do much of the same with video games.
A game on a disc is the same as a painting on a canvas. The painter is the only person allowed to make copies of his work, but he doesn't get to own every spec of paint in existence on every canvas he has ever used, and then sold.
The only problem is converting this analogy into purely digital goods, since the sale of said goods is the act of making a copy... so to resell digital goods would circumvents the letter of the law, but certainly not the spirit.
Only problem I have here is them claiming Gamestop is "the free market." Gamestop isn't the free market - ebay is the free market. And publishers are almost certainly going to be setting lower value on turn ins than what you could get on ebay. Gamestop only "wins" on convenience - you're usually going there anyways to buy something else.
Having experienced both sides of the argument::
1. I worked at Gamestop for 1+ years, telling people that walk up the the register with a new copy that they can save money by buying it used (1/20 people would still buy it new).
2. I've had people pirate and make money off of things I've made.
Honestly, I think the only viable solution to the "problem" is to simply offer online versions of your games via the cloud or whatever. For a discount.
So you'll still have physical copies that people can trade/gift to other people, as well as digital copies you can buy for 35-40$ (new) from the developer.
**The one thing people would have to understand tho, is that by buying it "digital" you are only gettting a license to play the game. Hence, they would not "own" it. (baring any perks the devs want to add via something like a "1 time friend gift" or something).
It's the best of both worlds, so to speak.
Buy physical:: You own the disk and can do what ever ya want.
Buy digital:: You own a limited license and are subject to the guidelines there in.
Video games are consumed then discarded, but cost a huge amount of money to make. This is why used games are "bad" - the publisher has to make their money back, but the game itself may not take a terribly long time to beat (consider that you can beat all of Portal 2, including co-op mode, in 12 hours or so, and yet it is considered one of the best games of all time). This is the ugly truth.
Moreover, being digital, they are readily copied, so it is difficult to tell if the seller has "really" divested themselves of the property, especially sans DRM.
Houses and cars are fundamentally different because you use them continuously. Moreover, houses and cars do indeed continue to generate money for their original manufacturer, in the form of repairs and additional contract work (like expanding houses or doing maintenance on them).
Films and music are much shorter than video games, so used sales of them are much less relevant - the shorter something is, the less you invest in doing it again. Rewatching a movie takes only a couple hours, listening to a song again only a few minutes. Replaying a game takes 8-60 hours, which is a HUGE investment of time, making it less likely - the shorter a game is, the more likely it is to be replayed. I'd wager most of you have replayed good short games, like Bastion and Portal, far more often than you've replayed much longer games.
Moreover, novelty is a big part of what makes games fun, which additionally hurts their reuse value. Books take some damage in this way as well, and many books never get reread - but books are mostly cheap and as such are much less worthwhile to resell.
Incidentally, regarding "passing it onto your children": this is just a dumb argument.
1) Media changes far too fast for this. Your parents' VHS tapes are worthless to you today, and indeed, most people have divested themselves of their VHS collections because they don't even have VHS players anymore. We're going to see at least one if not two media changes before we settle on a stable media (and that's assuming we don't go 100% digital anyway, which seems fairly likely at this point), rendering your collection of DVDs worthless to your kids as they simply won't have any way to play them. Video games for consoles are even worse, because it requires a functional console - do you really trust your console to make it out until you're dead?
2) This is more of a "length of copyright" issue. If copyrights lasted for a shorter period of time - say, 30-50 years - this would be utterly irrelevant as well.
I don't really have a problem with no digital resales because I never resell anything anyway.
As for returns... honestly, given how many games I beat within a week of picking them up, that seems kind of hard to do well. Maybe allowing a return within X many hours played? But even that varies by game...
I don't see why Steam doesn't use its digital marketplace to allow the sale of games just like everything else. They take a cut of every sale, so they're still making money. Perhaps not as much, but they're making it on something which quite literally costs them nothing. iTunes and various other digital goods things could do the exact same thing, and honestly should have to.
I have an idea on why iTunes and Steam don't get any complaints.
iTunes: Because no one cares/uses it really. Almost everyone just downloads directly to their mp3's or downloads music for free, which for many countries outside of america is actually legal. What iTunes does probably gets little complaints because it has almost no customers to complain about it in the first place.
Steam: The sales, the constantly lower game prices so rarely is a game sold for 60$ for much longer after release. Combine with 75% off from steam summer sales people get games for so cheap they either save so much money or have so many extra games as a result that they're willing to over look the lack of sharing option. Plus, they constantly try to work with the players, listen to them and make it better for the players so no one's worried that steam is going to take advantage of it as we may be worried places like Origin would.
Steam DRM isn't difficult to cut through. It's well known how to do it. In any case. I like Steam for the sales and convenience. But I will always buy GoG over Steam whenever I have the option.
@Gungan: You don't understand at all because you're looking at it the wrong way. The free market works both ways.
For someone to produce a video game, it must be profitable. A novel is unlikely to cost more than a couple man years to produce, and most take closer to one man-year.
A video game like Dragon Age or Call of Duty can easily take 100-200 man-years to produce, hence the $50-200 million budget.
Paying for a couple man years is not THAT expensive. Paying for 100-200 man-years is incredibly expensive.
If the game can't pay for that many man-years, then it won't be MADE. It won't EXIST.
Ownership rights mean absolutely nothing if you don't have anything to own in the first place. And this is what people don't get.
Gamestop doesn't make games better, it makes games worse because it means less and less money is going to pay for the man-years spent on the games. Thus they spend fewer man years and/or make you pay more money for the game.
@Gungan: You don't understand at all because you're looking at it the wrong way. The free market works both ways.
For someone to produce a video game, it must be profitable. A novel is unlikely to cost more than a couple man years to produce, and most take closer to one man-year.
A video game like Dragon Age or Call of Duty can easily take 100-200 man-years to produce, hence the $50-200 million budget.
Paying for a couple man years is not THAT expensive. Paying for 100-200 man-years is incredibly expensive.
If the game can't pay for that many man-years, then it won't be MADE. It won't EXIST.
Ownership rights mean absolutely nothing if you don't have anything to own in the first place. And this is what people don't get.
Gamestop doesn't make games better, it makes games worse because it means less and less money is going to pay for the man-years spent on the games. Thus they spend fewer man years and/or make you pay more money for the game.
Good thing films are so cheap to produce then. Otherwise the used market would be screwing them right now amiright? 8->
I have never understood the argument against the ability to sell a physical copy of a game you own. Generally the argument goes, "Well, publishers and developers don't make anything when you buy a used game..." to which I generally respond, "So what?".
I'm a writer. If I write a book and you buy that book you have the right to give or resell that book to anyone you want. Times are tight in the publishing industry but I don't know of any author or publisher anywhere that would begrudge you your right to sell that book you bought to someone else. (If I ever did meet a writer or a publisher like that I'd call him by his rightful name - asshole.)
Why should games be different from books or even movies or music? The easy answer is, they shouldn't. And they aren't.
One quick aside: The thought of trading a book in for "publisher credit" is, in a word, stupid. It's just another way of saying "I don't own my game ... the guy who made my game owns my game." How asinine would it be if I waltzed into a used book store to trade in a copy of Lord of the Rings for a copy of A Song of Fire and Ice only to be told I couldn't do that because they aren't owned by the same publishing company? It's _my_ book. It's _my_ game. It's a (mostly) free market; I should be able to sell it to whom I want for what the market will bear and use the proceeds as I see fit.
"But SomeNorCalGuy," you must be thinking, "What of purely digital content? Do you believe you can resell that as well?" And the answer, dear reader, is no. Let me tell you why.
The reason there isn't (and won't ever be) rioting in the streets over the inability to resell or return _digital_ content is because that is a condition the buyer acknowledges and accepts when buying digital content. It's the price we pay for convenience and discount. And (and this is important) if I don't like the conditions of the digital version _I have a choice_.
When I buy a video game for $20 in the Playstation Store instead of $30 at Target, I accept that in exchange for a $10 discount, faster load times and never needing to have/store/safeguard a physical disc, I can never resell that content. It's the same deal I make when I buy a book for $7 for my Kindle instead of $10 at Barnes and Noble or $8 for an album on iTunes instead of $12 for a CD at Best Buy.
But I have a _choice_ which is where I think Microsoft went wrong in the XB1 launch - they removed the choice factor.
Microsoft could have saved everyone a lot of piss and vinegar if they had offered gamers a choice when it came to game ownership and reselling. Digital content cannot be resold - ever. But with physical discs they could give gamers a choice: Either you treat this as every game disc ever where you need the disc in the machine in order to play the game (which has slower load times, takes up room in your living space and carries the risk of destruction) but you have no online checks to verify ownership. But you can resell the game to anyone at any time. OR you can treat the disc as a way to bypass digital downloads in lieu of a reliable highspeed connection. The disc installs the game on your system, after which you no longer need to have/store/safeguard that disc. The game cannot be resold ever (except maybe under certain circumstances: friend for 30 days, can only be resold once, etc.) and the console has to phone home every 24 hours to verify ownership. In exchange for that inconvenience you have faster load times and no need to take up space in your home with an extensive physical games library. Don't like it? Fine. Pick the other thing.
**TL;DR** Used Games Good. Digital Content Great. Microsoft Bad.
Let me put it to you this way. The cost of you writing a book does not exceed the millions or billions of dollars. The cost of switching a book between digital and analog formats, the writing version of different codes required for consoles and PCs (even though in difficulty it's more like localizing each book for three or more languages), is negligible.
That isn't true of video games in any sense. Even small games cost a huge amount of money and require, in total, a greater amount of technical knowledge and education.
If you looked at how revenue was split in video games and applied it to writing; 20-30 writers (Development house) would have to split the profit of each book (Game) with their Publisher (Publisher), their Editor (Cost of certification), and the inventor of paper (The company making the console).
Asking games to get their money back from just their first week sales is like asking film studios to make their money back from lifetime DvD releases, and that market has bottomed out for them as well (also, due to Pirating, but mostly due to streaming services).
If the game can't pay for that many man-years, then it won't be MADE. It won't EXIST.
Ownership rights mean absolutely nothing if you don't have anything to own in the first place. And this is what people don't get.
I fully understand. What you're ignoring is that if a company with a team of people can't make something profitable enough to pay the bills, they're overreaching their ability to recoup the costs of a game whose budget is clearly unrealistic for the market. The same applies to movies. You don't make a heartfelt character film on a blockbuster budget because you will never make your money back.
Every project is a risk, and not every game deserves to make their money back. The entire problem with the AAA industry is their completely unattainable expectations, and perpetual regurgitation of the same games people get sick of and profits taper off. SURPRISE.
Ownership rights apply equally to everything. You do not and cannot give exemptions to things that take lots of money and man hours to make. If that were allowed, you would not be allowed to re-sell any modern tech gadgets either. Those companies don't get money in perpetuity from used sales of last years' models either.
Big budget video games are products just like any other. You put out a new model next year and get on with your life, that's how it works.
If you want to make sure that an artsy game that you think deserves to get made, you go low budget to ensure you don't bankrupt yourself before it's done.
Let me put it to you this way. The cost of you writing a book does not exceed the millions or billions of dollars. The cost of switching a book between digital and analog formats, the writing version of different codes required for consoles and PCs (even though in difficulty it's more like localizing each book for three or more languages), is negligible.
That isn't true of video games in any sense. Even small games cost a huge amount of money and require, in total, a greater amount of technical knowledge and education.
If you looked at how revenue was split in video games and applied it to writing; 20-30 writers (Development house) would have to split the profit of each book (Game) with their Publisher (Publisher), their Editor (Cost of certification), and the inventor of paper (The company making the console).
Asking games to get their money back from just their first week sales is like asking film studios to make their money back from lifetime DvD releases, and that market has bottomed out for them as well (also, due to Pirating, but mostly due to streaming services).
This line of reasoning is treating the symptoms, not the cause. Film studios still get money from streaming services, which are just the new rental industry with stocking DVDs replaced with paying license fees.
You think authors don't pay editors, publishers and distributors?
Clearly the problem here is the revenue distribution in the industry (publishers are greedy assholes, so screw them), shitty budgeting, and poor market research... not ownership rights of stuff consumers buy legally with their money.
"Publishers feel as if they need some of that money if they're going to continue making AAA games". Well... too bad they can't have it? If the sales of new games aren't high enough, I see a couple of options. 1) change the price of new/digital games to where the sales are high enough, don't sell everything at $60 flat, this includes progressive sales to MATCH markets like ebay as time goes on, 2) reduce the budget used to make the games so that the sales ARE enough, 3) make BETTER games, not me too Call of Duty rip offs that don't achieve a percentage of what CoD does.
But your solution is "Maybe we can cheat the customer out of cash and give them store credit for one specific type of product! It'll be like gamers are sharecroppers or workers in a company owned town. And somehow this will sound good to them?"
I'd wager the reason theres not alot of out cry over the way steam and itunes does business is because even though they basically treat us like we're leasing our purchases they don't necessarily charge us retail price.
You can get songs for a dollar instead of buying the whole cd, and steam sales etc make games go from retail price to something more akin to what you'd be charged if you rented/leased it.
Now when you try to treat physical copies in that same way, stuff we purchased full retail price and still try and get control over it, thats gonna peeve people off.
Anyone who thinks buying used hurts the industry is a moron.
No one crys fowl over used book sales, used car, used furniture etc.
I'm pretty sure that the car dealership and manufacturer don't get a cut of the action when you sell your car, a publisher and author don't get a cut if you sell a book to a friend or store, and we still have chairs so it doesn't look like years of used furniture sales have damaged that industry.
So to anyone who thinks used game sales are bad.
Please stop being a moron.
Two problems there, one of which I pointed out in my previous post.
1) Films, unlike games, are much less consumable. That is to say, you are much more likely to rewatch a movie than you are to replay a video game, because movies take much less time to watch than video games. Even still, it is worth remembering that they have come out with a new edition of many movies for each of VHS, DVD, and Blu-Ray, so in many cases they have sold the same movies to people 2-3 times.
2) A great deal of film revenue comes from people going to theaters to watch the movie when it comes out, with friends. It is a social event to go watch a movie together, but video games are typically much more solo activities. Resale is much less of an issue for games with big-time multiplayer because people keep playing multiplayer and the entertainment is the other people involved (and people find binding multiplayer games to their accounts to be far more okay for whatever reason). Theater viewing is also purely disposable; you can't rewatch the movie you saw in the theaters.
A third point is that movies just aren't as expensive as video games. Thus, they are less attractive resales. And a fourth is that, as far as I have seen, retail stores don't PUSH resales the way gamestop pushes resales of video games.
@Titanium Dragon "Houses and cars are fundamentally different because you use them continuously. Moreover, houses and cars do indeed continue to generate money for their original manufacturer, in the form of repairs and additional contract work (like expanding houses or doing maintenance on them).
Films and music are much shorter than video games, so used sales of them are much less relevant - the shorter something is, the less you invest in doing it again. "
You're being inconsistent from one paragraph to the next. Used sales are ok for things you use a long time (house + car) and ok for things that you don't use for very long (movie), but because video games are used for shorter periods than a car, but longer than a movie, used purchases are suddenly not ok. What?
Wrong. Video games are the same as cars, movies, books, vacuum cleaners, and every other product out there. They took people to make, they're sold for an amount, and they see no money back from used sales, yet every other industry is fine while video games are in a "crisis" because of it.
I call Bull.
"1) Films, unlike games, are much less consumable. That is to say, you are much more likely to rewatch a movie than you are to replay a video game"
This is complete nonsense! There are countless films I've never watched more than once, same as video games.
"A third point is that movies just aren't as expensive as video games."
Movies are far more expensive at a hour of entertainment/cost rate....
Two problems there, one of which I pointed out in my previous post.
1) Films, unlike games, are much less consumable. That is to say, you are much more likely to rewatch a movie than you are to replay a video game, because movies take much less time to watch than video games. Even still, it is worth remembering that they have come out with a new edition of many movies for each of VHS, DVD, and Blu-Ray, so in many cases they have sold the same movies to people 2-3 times.
2) A great deal of film revenue comes from people going to theaters to watch the movie when it comes out, with friends. It is a social event to go watch a movie together, but video games are typically much more solo activities. Resale is much less of an issue for games with big-time multiplayer because people keep playing multiplayer and the entertainment is the other people involved (and people find binding multiplayer games to their accounts to be far more okay for whatever reason). Theater viewing is also purely disposable; you can't rewatch the movie you saw in the theaters.
A third point is that movies just aren't as expensive as video games. Thus, they are less attractive resales. And a fourth is that, as far as I have seen, retail stores don't PUSH resales the way gamestop pushes resales of video games.
You mean the exact same things I said in my prior post where I addressed the idea that the issue is down to both the system of sale and the culture surrounding used games?
I mean, as another example while books may seem to be in the same boat people just don't think of selling them at all. Waterstones and other major retailers don't stock used at all.
The problem with used games (and I do believe it's a problem, though not some massive evil force) is that they're 100% equal to a new product and are being aggressively pushed by retailers.
The thing that people need to remember is that videogames are subject to the rules of the free market. And there IS a marketplace going on here, subject to a large number of forces. You can passionately argue till you're blue in the face about your, "Rights". It doesn't make a damn lick of a difference in what the very real effect of market forces do.
Without used games, you remove a dead weight loss. Money is a resource, and as far as the dynamic goes between the game creators and the game players, used games markets are just a giant pit into which money is thrown. The more money you throw into the pit, the more money publishers need to charge to make a profit. Used games keep prices artificially high: every cent that goes to a third party is a cent that doesn't go into more games, or into keeping prices down. Get rid of used games, or (and extra kudos to EC for pointing out this simple yet effective solution) give publishers a cut of used game sales, and pay off used game retailers an amount that accurately reflects their effort in the supply chain, and games will drop in price by a LARGER amount then you make back in used sales, because you are getting rid of something that is the very definition of wastefulness. And seriously, with used games, you are able to compete with the largest, most cost intensive company imaginable. You are ALWAYS able to undercut their price for almost 0 effort, and that is just not sustainable (Especially if digital resale becomes a thing, which would absolutely lead to either a crash, or shady buisness practices that would make EA look saintly). Get rid of new games, and companies will be able to lower prices drastically, receive the same percentage of money per sale, and sell to a much larger audience. Yes, they will resist at first, but in time, the ability to make a lot more money will sink in, and they will be able to drop prices. They may be kind of dumb, but I have faith that their greed can overcome that, even if it means providing us with better service.
With used games, sure, you can convince yourself that you have a good deal going on. But nothing is going to change the fact that big companies will always, and SHOULD always, have a profit motivation in mind, right up until we have a utopian society with infinite resources. If you want to argue used games are your right, then you have no right to complain when publishers react to that in the only ways that are rational. By cutting up a game and selling its omitted parts to us, by ensuring that games are flash in a pan, ostentatious spectacles that have 0 substance, since games that need to "catch on" are inevitably going to be hurt the hardest by the secondary market there is no incentive to have ANY sort of tail whatsoever. You are going to have tacked on multiplayer in an attempt to prevent trade in's once the game is finished through artificially extending its shelf life, and new IPs will be completely ignored, since only the broadest, most generic of mass appeal games from the most successful games will be able to have a burst of initial buyers large enough to turn a profit, and savvy core gamers who best utilize secondary markets are going to be ignored in favor of making games with mass appeal. Used games incentivise, essentially, everything we complain about in games, and if we get rid of them, it will be possible for the actual publishers to provide all of the advantages of used games, in much larger quantities since a dead weight loss is cut out.
Now I am NOT criticizing people who buy used games. You buy something that is the best deal for you. I can't blame you for that whatsoever. How could I blame you for acting rational? No, you have every right to buy whatever is cheapest and legal. I'm just saying that maybe if we look at the big picture, we can figure out a way to cooperate in a mutually beneficial way. Sure, there are plenty of ways for companies to screw this up, but we need to look long term, at what market forces will eventually favor. And all the changes we want in games are the result of incentives provided by removing used games.
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I have mentioned this before but there are so many things we buy used that no one things about the "developers". Things like houses, cars, movies, books, clothes are among these.
However EC NEVER mentions this because it goes against the anti-gamestop propaganda they keep wanting to push on us. Why does EC feel its ok to buy those things used and not games.
Why shouldn't I be able to get money for the game I bought. If you are not ok with people not owning digital media why is the idea of not being able to "own" physical media not give you the same outrage. And yes I know we own it now, but the question still stands.
I Enjoy EC because it gives a lot of insight about the Gaming industry and culture, but I hate bias propaganda. And I know they will never address these issue in respect to used gaming because it means they might be wrong about a few things.
Second thing I have to say is in the UK you can get a refund on any digital sale (no questions asked) if you return it within 7 days, which is great, that law is one of the few things keeping rights for the consumer.
Third thing, you say why aren't we complaining about steam and itunes? I wonder that too, because I have been, I have never liked either of them and never use either of them, but nobody else can seem to understand why I don't like it and my explanations seem to fall on deaf ears.
- First-Sale Docrtine, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine
No, they do not get anything from second-hand sales. Once they have legitimately sold the game, through a retailer or directly, the game copyright is exhausted, gone, done. You can then sell it to anyone, anywhere, for whatever you agree on as a fair price.
The fight against the used games market is a direct attack on First-Sale Doctrine. It's an attack on capitalism and the free market economy. And its one of the reasons that the games industry is in the poor shape it's in now. Greed isn't good in this case.
Personally I think that the solution to the used game problem would be giving publishers a cut of every used game sold.
They mention Gamestop (and would mention Game, their equivalent in the UK) because big retailers literally train their staff to offer the customer a used copy of the game if they come to the counter with a new one. That is the literal definition of a lost sale for publishers and is the behaviour that worries them.
Also houses, cars, movies, books and clothes all degrade in quality with use. Your game does not unless you damage the storage device (even then, if it's digital you're still fine).
Regarding the first sale doctrine, it's a good thing that the EULA you agree too on any digital product outlines how it's a licence to make use of their copy righted materials and not them out-right selling you them.
I'm very on the fence regarding used games either way, just thought I'd provide some really obvious statements for people who were running away with arguments like 'well used car sales are cool LOL'
Which is why I was sooooo very relieved when your supreme court ruled it illegal to patent human genes.
On the topic of crazy copyright and consumer laws, you may like this series:
http://everythingisaremix.info/watch-the-series/
Anyway, the returns policy issue, this is why I love my country's (Australia) consumer laws. They actually mandate that anything bought must be of reasonable quality and do as advertised. And that if it isn't, you can return it for a full refund (not store credit, money back). That is the law, and it applies to digital goods too. Companies like Apple try their damnedest not to do this and to make it difficult, but you can cut through that by being firm and reminding them you can go to the ACCC (Australian Competition and Consumer Comission).
As for Steam, I think people aren't overly concerned because the price is pretty much right, especially during sales. GRiD 2 is so far the only game I've pre-purchased off there and that was because it was a full £10 cheaper then the Xbox 360 version, included all the damned day one DLC packs and a copy of GRiD 1. I was massively disappointed with GRiD 2 but because the price was right I'm not angry. Being forced to pay more and get less content doesn't endear anyone to anything and in Codemaster's case would have pushed away a lot of customers (hell, I'm a lover of Codemaster's games but I very nearly didn't buy GRiD 2, even after waiting for it for years). If I remember rightly as well, the European Union made it legal to sell second hand digital goods as well so the legal side of things is still open.
So yes, the ultimate issue is trust, and with games giving the consumer less and less (especially some of the so called AAA games) trust is getting thin on the ground.
2. used games does not hurt publishers or developers because they already had the $60 of the original sale, which is a lot of money.
3. used games and borrowed games actually are free advertising for said games, since most people will buy the sequel if they liked the first one or buy another game from another studio.
This video feels hugely outdated and out of place. Are you sure you want to defend game publishers?
2. They don't get the whole 60$ and in the persepective of game design that's a drop in the ocean.
3. Is a perfectly good point and one they made. However you could just as easily have no used games and instead replace it with sales and/or regular price drops in order to get more or less the same results with more money going to the game dev. See Steam.
I really don't see them defending game publishers so much as explaining both sides and then setting out a method that allows publishers to deal with used games without being so jarring to consumers.
Some games are shorter and do not merit re-play value. That does not entitle you to a refund in any way shape or form. Seriously.
Regardless his point about the 24-48hr window to return a game is actually less a statement of a games length or quality but more about how it's an actual behaviour people engage in purposefully. To buy a game on friday and blitz through on the weekend and cash it in on monday in order to maximise the money they get back from a used game. People do this with games like Skyrim regardless of their length because it benefits both the consumer and game stores (mostly game stores) to have this quick turn around.
Having that used copy there then more or less denies a launch week sale.
There's a pretty neat article from one of the guys at People can Fly (Bulletstorm) that details how this fear of people blitzing games to re-sale and in turn damage launch sales is something that games are literally having features designed around preventing: http://www.edge-online.com/features/microsofts-xbox-one-eighty-a-big-win-for-consumers-not-so-fast/
It's well worth a read honestly because it's not some publisher doing it from the perspective of wanting money. It's a dev talking about how game mechanics are affected by used games.
I will say that I feel really bad for the developers that put so much time money and effort into making great games and then assholes pirate the crap in under 24 hours...
Think about their proposal: Gamestop would lose out because the credit they give out for a trade-in would be less valuable (since you can't buy whatever you want with it), making their customers less inclined to trade games in. So the only reason they would accept it is if they are forced to. In order to force them (and all other retailers), it has to be mandated by the platform owner and enforced via always-online DRM. And we have already seen how many customers are interested in a console with that policy.
Publishers, retailers and consumers have conflicting interests in this, so I think it is very unlikely we will see major change unless one group is forced into it; e.g. by legislation or simply not having another option open to them.
I'm a writer. If I write a book and you buy that book you have the right to give or resell that book to anyone you want. Times are tight in the publishing industry but I don't know of any author or publisher anywhere that would begrudge you your right to sell that book you bought to someone else. (If I ever did meet a writer or a publisher like that I'd call him by his rightful name - asshole.)
Why should games be different from books or even movies or music? The easy answer is, they shouldn't. And they aren't.
One quick aside: The thought of trading a book in for "publisher credit" is, in a word, stupid. It's just another way of saying "I don't own my game ... the guy who made my game owns my game." How asinine would it be if I waltzed into a used book store to trade in a copy of Lord of the Rings for a copy of A Song of Fire and Ice only to be told I couldn't do that because they aren't owned by the same publishing company? It's _my_ book. It's _my_ game. It's a (mostly) free market; I should be able to sell it to whom I want for what the market will bear and use the proceeds as I see fit.
"But SomeNorCalGuy," you must be thinking, "What of purely digital content? Do you believe you can resell that as well?" And the answer, dear reader, is no. Let me tell you why.
The reason there isn't (and won't ever be) rioting in the streets over the inability to resell or return _digital_ content is because that is a condition the buyer acknowledges and accepts when buying digital content. It's the price we pay for convenience and discount. And (and this is important) if I don't like the conditions of the digital version _I have a choice_.
When I buy a video game for $20 in the Playstation Store instead of $30 at Target, I accept that in exchange for a $10 discount, faster load times and never needing to have/store/safeguard a physical disc, I can never resell that content. It's the same deal I make when I buy a book for $7 for my Kindle instead of $10 at Barnes and Noble or $8 for an album on iTunes instead of $12 for a CD at Best Buy.
But I have a _choice_ which is where I think Microsoft went wrong in the XB1 launch - they removed the choice factor.
Microsoft could have saved everyone a lot of piss and vinegar if they had offered gamers a choice when it came to game ownership and reselling. Digital content cannot be resold - ever. But with physical discs they could give gamers a choice: Either you treat this as every game disc ever where you need the disc in the machine in order to play the game (which has slower load times, takes up room in your living space and carries the risk of destruction) but you have no online checks to verify ownership. But you can resell the game to anyone at any time. OR you can treat the disc as a way to bypass digital downloads in lieu of a reliable highspeed connection. The disc installs the game on your system, after which you no longer need to have/store/safeguard that disc. The game cannot be resold ever (except maybe under certain circumstances: friend for 30 days, can only be resold once, etc.) and the console has to phone home every 24 hours to verify ownership. In exchange for that inconvenience you have faster load times and no need to take up space in your home with an extensive physical games library. Don't like it? Fine. Pick the other thing.
**TL;DR** Used Games Good. Digital Content Great. Microsoft Bad.
Why does the degrading in quality of houses, cars, movies, books and clothes matter? My point was all those are bought and sold with no money being given to the developer and no one gripes about that, but games somehow hurt the industry. My point was all those are sold and bought used and EC makes no comparison to those items and games. They ignore the fact.
As far as Gamestop training their staff to push used games, I can agree that can hurt but only if people think saving $3 is worth it and most of the time I am in a Gamestop its ignorant parents who are duped by that not gamers who usually support a game or company. Again they didn't mention that in the video so I can only guess that they have a general bias against Gamestop because they sell used games. If they are going to be fair about the issue they need to mention all the retailers who sell used games and don't give money to publishers.
I bought mass effect used and ME2 and 3 new but discounted so how did that used game sale hurt the publisher?
Because in the case of a car it's a demonstrably worse product. Even in the case of books there are (at least for the physical copies) reasons to prefer a new book to an old one. With a game it has literally zero effect on your experience and as a result used games thrive to a higher degree. As to why films and books never had this issue I'm not sure. If I were to hazard a guess it's because culturally people tend to 'collect' books and films to share and re-experience. The same attitude doesn't seem as dominant with people who play games however.
Saying it's ignorant parent's is really belittling the average game store customer. Very few people have reason to not take that five pound off and very, very few people do. Saying that you know a particular stores practices are problematic and then saying you think people are bias for singling them out is silly, seriously.
What difference would it make to you if you'd being able to pick up Mass Effect digitally for the same price? Absolutely none, except the publishers would have gotten money out of it. Which more or less proves my point that a really good way to deal with used games for both sides is simply to create a situation where in 'new' games are discounted or on sale. You still get to find out about Mass Effect and go on to be a loyal customer and EA earns a fiver more.
Edit: It's Capitol Records, LLC v. ReDigi, Inc. in the southern district of NY.
FWIW, District Court rulings don't really settle jack, except as between the parties. This will be appealed. Even if it isn't, it is only persuasive authority (other courts are free to ignore it if they choose).
Digital ownership rights are a real issue and cannot be allowed to be dictated by industry lobby groups. I collect books and movies to share and pass on to my kids. I do much of the same with video games.
A game on a disc is the same as a painting on a canvas. The painter is the only person allowed to make copies of his work, but he doesn't get to own every spec of paint in existence on every canvas he has ever used, and then sold.
The only problem is converting this analogy into purely digital goods, since the sale of said goods is the act of making a copy... so to resell digital goods would circumvents the letter of the law, but certainly not the spirit.
1. I worked at Gamestop for 1+ years, telling people that walk up the the register with a new copy that they can save money by buying it used (1/20 people would still buy it new).
2. I've had people pirate and make money off of things I've made.
Honestly, I think the only viable solution to the "problem" is to simply offer online versions of your games via the cloud or whatever. For a discount.
So you'll still have physical copies that people can trade/gift to other people, as well as digital copies you can buy for 35-40$ (new) from the developer.
**The one thing people would have to understand tho, is that by buying it "digital" you are only gettting a license to play the game. Hence, they would not "own" it. (baring any perks the devs want to add via something like a "1 time friend gift" or something).
It's the best of both worlds, so to speak.
Buy physical:: You own the disk and can do what ever ya want.
Buy digital:: You own a limited license and are subject to the guidelines there in.
~Just my 2 cents.
Moreover, being digital, they are readily copied, so it is difficult to tell if the seller has "really" divested themselves of the property, especially sans DRM.
Houses and cars are fundamentally different because you use them continuously. Moreover, houses and cars do indeed continue to generate money for their original manufacturer, in the form of repairs and additional contract work (like expanding houses or doing maintenance on them).
Films and music are much shorter than video games, so used sales of them are much less relevant - the shorter something is, the less you invest in doing it again. Rewatching a movie takes only a couple hours, listening to a song again only a few minutes. Replaying a game takes 8-60 hours, which is a HUGE investment of time, making it less likely - the shorter a game is, the more likely it is to be replayed. I'd wager most of you have replayed good short games, like Bastion and Portal, far more often than you've replayed much longer games.
Moreover, novelty is a big part of what makes games fun, which additionally hurts their reuse value. Books take some damage in this way as well, and many books never get reread - but books are mostly cheap and as such are much less worthwhile to resell.
Incidentally, regarding "passing it onto your children": this is just a dumb argument.
1) Media changes far too fast for this. Your parents' VHS tapes are worthless to you today, and indeed, most people have divested themselves of their VHS collections because they don't even have VHS players anymore. We're going to see at least one if not two media changes before we settle on a stable media (and that's assuming we don't go 100% digital anyway, which seems fairly likely at this point), rendering your collection of DVDs worthless to your kids as they simply won't have any way to play them. Video games for consoles are even worse, because it requires a functional console - do you really trust your console to make it out until you're dead?
2) This is more of a "length of copyright" issue. If copyrights lasted for a shorter period of time - say, 30-50 years - this would be utterly irrelevant as well.
I don't really have a problem with no digital resales because I never resell anything anyway.
As for returns... honestly, given how many games I beat within a week of picking them up, that seems kind of hard to do well. Maybe allowing a return within X many hours played? But even that varies by game...
iTunes: Because no one cares/uses it really. Almost everyone just downloads directly to their mp3's or downloads music for free, which for many countries outside of america is actually legal. What iTunes does probably gets little complaints because it has almost no customers to complain about it in the first place.
Steam: The sales, the constantly lower game prices so rarely is a game sold for 60$ for much longer after release. Combine with 75% off from steam summer sales people get games for so cheap they either save so much money or have so many extra games as a result that they're willing to over look the lack of sharing option. Plus, they constantly try to work with the players, listen to them and make it better for the players so no one's worried that steam is going to take advantage of it as we may be worried places like Origin would.
How is that any different from books? The cost it takes to make something has absolutely no bearing when it comes to ownership rights.
For someone to produce a video game, it must be profitable. A novel is unlikely to cost more than a couple man years to produce, and most take closer to one man-year.
A video game like Dragon Age or Call of Duty can easily take 100-200 man-years to produce, hence the $50-200 million budget.
Paying for a couple man years is not THAT expensive. Paying for 100-200 man-years is incredibly expensive.
If the game can't pay for that many man-years, then it won't be MADE. It won't EXIST.
Ownership rights mean absolutely nothing if you don't have anything to own in the first place. And this is what people don't get.
Gamestop doesn't make games better, it makes games worse because it means less and less money is going to pay for the man-years spent on the games. Thus they spend fewer man years and/or make you pay more money for the game.
Good thing films are so cheap to produce then. Otherwise the used market would be screwing them right now amiright? 8->
Let me put it to you this way. The cost of you writing a book does not exceed the millions or billions of dollars. The cost of switching a book between digital and analog formats, the writing version of different codes required for consoles and PCs (even though in difficulty it's more like localizing each book for three or more languages), is negligible.
That isn't true of video games in any sense. Even small games cost a huge amount of money and require, in total, a greater amount of technical knowledge and education.
If you looked at how revenue was split in video games and applied it to writing; 20-30 writers (Development house) would have to split the profit of each book (Game) with their Publisher (Publisher), their Editor (Cost of certification), and the inventor of paper (The company making the console).
Asking games to get their money back from just their first week sales is like asking film studios to make their money back from lifetime DvD releases, and that market has bottomed out for them as well (also, due to Pirating, but mostly due to streaming services).
I fully understand. What you're ignoring is that if a company with a team of people can't make something profitable enough to pay the bills, they're overreaching their ability to recoup the costs of a game whose budget is clearly unrealistic for the market. The same applies to movies. You don't make a heartfelt character film on a blockbuster budget because you will never make your money back.
Every project is a risk, and not every game deserves to make their money back. The entire problem with the AAA industry is their completely unattainable expectations, and perpetual regurgitation of the same games people get sick of and profits taper off. SURPRISE.
Ownership rights apply equally to everything. You do not and cannot give exemptions to things that take lots of money and man hours to make. If that were allowed, you would not be allowed to re-sell any modern tech gadgets either. Those companies don't get money in perpetuity from used sales of last years' models either.
Big budget video games are products just like any other. You put out a new model next year and get on with your life, that's how it works.
If you want to make sure that an artsy game that you think deserves to get made, you go low budget to ensure you don't bankrupt yourself before it's done.
This line of reasoning is treating the symptoms, not the cause. Film studios still get money from streaming services, which are just the new rental industry with stocking DVDs replaced with paying license fees.
You think authors don't pay editors, publishers and distributors?
Clearly the problem here is the revenue distribution in the industry (publishers are greedy assholes, so screw them), shitty budgeting, and poor market research... not ownership rights of stuff consumers buy legally with their money.
http://penny-arcade.com/report/article/double-fines-adventure-game-snapped-in-twain-fans-taste-the-fun-of-being-a
$400,000 Kickstarter Target
$3,300,000 Kickstarter Funding
STILL NOT ENOUGH MONEY TO FINISH THE GAME. How's that budgeting going guys?
But your solution is "Maybe we can cheat the customer out of cash and give them store credit for one specific type of product! It'll be like gamers are sharecroppers or workers in a company owned town. And somehow this will sound good to them?"
You can get songs for a dollar instead of buying the whole cd, and steam sales etc make games go from retail price to something more akin to what you'd be charged if you rented/leased it.
Now when you try to treat physical copies in that same way, stuff we purchased full retail price and still try and get control over it, thats gonna peeve people off.
Anyone who thinks buying used hurts the industry is a moron.
No one crys fowl over used book sales, used car, used furniture etc.
I'm pretty sure that the car dealership and manufacturer don't get a cut of the action when you sell your car, a publisher and author don't get a cut if you sell a book to a friend or store, and we still have chairs so it doesn't look like years of used furniture sales have damaged that industry.
So to anyone who thinks used game sales are bad.
Please stop being a moron.
Two problems there, one of which I pointed out in my previous post.
1) Films, unlike games, are much less consumable. That is to say, you are much more likely to rewatch a movie than you are to replay a video game, because movies take much less time to watch than video games. Even still, it is worth remembering that they have come out with a new edition of many movies for each of VHS, DVD, and Blu-Ray, so in many cases they have sold the same movies to people 2-3 times.
2) A great deal of film revenue comes from people going to theaters to watch the movie when it comes out, with friends. It is a social event to go watch a movie together, but video games are typically much more solo activities. Resale is much less of an issue for games with big-time multiplayer because people keep playing multiplayer and the entertainment is the other people involved (and people find binding multiplayer games to their accounts to be far more okay for whatever reason). Theater viewing is also purely disposable; you can't rewatch the movie you saw in the theaters.
A third point is that movies just aren't as expensive as video games. Thus, they are less attractive resales. And a fourth is that, as far as I have seen, retail stores don't PUSH resales the way gamestop pushes resales of video games.
Films and music are much shorter than video games, so used sales of them are much less relevant - the shorter something is, the less you invest in doing it again. "
You're being inconsistent from one paragraph to the next. Used sales are ok for things you use a long time (house + car) and ok for things that you don't use for very long (movie), but because video games are used for shorter periods than a car, but longer than a movie, used purchases are suddenly not ok. What?
Wrong. Video games are the same as cars, movies, books, vacuum cleaners, and every other product out there. They took people to make, they're sold for an amount, and they see no money back from used sales, yet every other industry is fine while video games are in a "crisis" because of it.
I call Bull.
"1) Films, unlike games, are much less consumable. That is to say, you are much more likely to rewatch a movie than you are to replay a video game"
This is complete nonsense! There are countless films I've never watched more than once, same as video games.
"A third point is that movies just aren't as expensive as video games."
Movies are far more expensive at a hour of entertainment/cost rate....
You mean the exact same things I said in my prior post where I addressed the idea that the issue is down to both the system of sale and the culture surrounding used games?
I mean, as another example while books may seem to be in the same boat people just don't think of selling them at all. Waterstones and other major retailers don't stock used at all.
The problem with used games (and I do believe it's a problem, though not some massive evil force) is that they're 100% equal to a new product and are being aggressively pushed by retailers.
Without used games, you remove a dead weight loss. Money is a resource, and as far as the dynamic goes between the game creators and the game players, used games markets are just a giant pit into which money is thrown. The more money you throw into the pit, the more money publishers need to charge to make a profit. Used games keep prices artificially high: every cent that goes to a third party is a cent that doesn't go into more games, or into keeping prices down. Get rid of used games, or (and extra kudos to EC for pointing out this simple yet effective solution) give publishers a cut of used game sales, and pay off used game retailers an amount that accurately reflects their effort in the supply chain, and games will drop in price by a LARGER amount then you make back in used sales, because you are getting rid of something that is the very definition of wastefulness. And seriously, with used games, you are able to compete with the largest, most cost intensive company imaginable. You are ALWAYS able to undercut their price for almost 0 effort, and that is just not sustainable (Especially if digital resale becomes a thing, which would absolutely lead to either a crash, or shady buisness practices that would make EA look saintly). Get rid of new games, and companies will be able to lower prices drastically, receive the same percentage of money per sale, and sell to a much larger audience. Yes, they will resist at first, but in time, the ability to make a lot more money will sink in, and they will be able to drop prices. They may be kind of dumb, but I have faith that their greed can overcome that, even if it means providing us with better service.
With used games, sure, you can convince yourself that you have a good deal going on. But nothing is going to change the fact that big companies will always, and SHOULD always, have a profit motivation in mind, right up until we have a utopian society with infinite resources. If you want to argue used games are your right, then you have no right to complain when publishers react to that in the only ways that are rational. By cutting up a game and selling its omitted parts to us, by ensuring that games are flash in a pan, ostentatious spectacles that have 0 substance, since games that need to "catch on" are inevitably going to be hurt the hardest by the secondary market there is no incentive to have ANY sort of tail whatsoever. You are going to have tacked on multiplayer in an attempt to prevent trade in's once the game is finished through artificially extending its shelf life, and new IPs will be completely ignored, since only the broadest, most generic of mass appeal games from the most successful games will be able to have a burst of initial buyers large enough to turn a profit, and savvy core gamers who best utilize secondary markets are going to be ignored in favor of making games with mass appeal. Used games incentivise, essentially, everything we complain about in games, and if we get rid of them, it will be possible for the actual publishers to provide all of the advantages of used games, in much larger quantities since a dead weight loss is cut out.
Now I am NOT criticizing people who buy used games. You buy something that is the best deal for you. I can't blame you for that whatsoever. How could I blame you for acting rational? No, you have every right to buy whatever is cheapest and legal. I'm just saying that maybe if we look at the big picture, we can figure out a way to cooperate in a mutually beneficial way. Sure, there are plenty of ways for companies to screw this up, but we need to look long term, at what market forces will eventually favor. And all the changes we want in games are the result of incentives provided by removing used games.