If the game marketplace is going to have to shrink and change anyway, with outrageous development costs and all that, wouldn't it make sense to just go "fine, if you don't have an internet connection, this is no longer for you. Find another hobby, goodbye" and have the market shrink on your own terms, and get to the better system now instead of waiting for another 5-7 years for the next console generation, limping along all the while, holding onto the dead weight of people who aren't even willing to buy your game new or recommend it to their friend instead of just giving it to them?
Haha yeah, abandoning a huge amount of your customers would turn out just fine. I'm sure.
Most of Canada has shitty bandwidth caps. Guess the whole country should be told to go fuck itself then?
Also you seem to be implying that everyone who does not have a good Internet setup for an all-digital gaming world doesn't buy new games and that's just...what?
It seems to work fine for steam. It's not like the vast majority of popular steam games are 120mb or something. They're often times several gigs larger than the console ports.
It works fine for Steam because the people who play PC games are much more likely to be able to handle these things.
The PC and console gaming markets, and the overall makeup of the consumers in those markets, are not identical. It is wrong to treat them as identical.
The gap between the two markets is smaller than it used to be, but the gap is still there. "It works for PC gaming" is not anywhere close to the be-all end-all argument some of you think it is.
It is if you assume the market would change to be more like the market for steam if the product were made to be more like steam. This change would benefit publishers (the adopt these types of sales whenever they can), and it would benefit the console manufactures (valve makes a huge amount of money off of steam), and it would (I'm going off of how much people love steam here) benefit people who would stick around through the change.
Again, the idea isn't to please everyone. The idea is to make console gaming a viable industry for publishers/developers. Some consumers may get left behind when/if that happens. If you don't like the changes to a market, you don't have to stay in that market.
So, in other words. Fuck most of Canada, and fuck me.
I have a bandwidth cap and have no options to get an internet connection without a bandwidth cap. I have trouble fitting in one major game release without going over. And if I go over I get hit with fees and get my connection throttled.
What you want will literally push me and a lot of people like me out of the market. I wouldn't even get a choice. Destroying my hobby and my passion in one simple move.
So forgive me if your "I got mine!" attitude makes me more than a little upset.
Hey, tell that to someone that works on games. I'm sure them having to go out and look for jobs because the industry is bleeding is totally the same as you no longer being able to enjoy your hobby. I'm sure the people at whatever development house was closed this half of the week totally understand and feel your pain.
Also saying people who want to retain ownership privileges are "throwing a fit" is just exactly the kind of attitude I despise.
It is not some crazy irrational concept to want to actually own your shit. I own my movies. I own my books. I have owned my console games since console games existed. I do not want that to change and absolutely none of you have given me a good reason as to why I'm wrong to want to own my games.
If you don't care about being able to swap games with friends or trade in games to help afford the latest new release, fan fucking tastic for you. That doesn't mean it's okay to force everyone who enjoys this part of being a consumer to give up those privileges.
You people are arguing for the gutting of gaming consumer privileges and then expecting people not to fucking care about what they're losing.
Actually I'm arguing for DD games with steam style sales. I like being able to spend around $40 at christmas and pick up any games I missed throughout the year. As a side effect, yes, it would do what you describe. However, in my mine the benefit outweighs the cost completely. Arguing against a system where you can routinely get things for 75% off because then you wouldn't be able to buy those things at a big box store for maybe 50% used is "throwing a fit".
Hypothetical example:
A game cost $100 new. You can get it for $25 DD. You can get it used for $50. You want to share that game with your friend, so you buy it used. I want to play that game with my friend so I get both of us to buy it for $25. Between the two of us we spend $50. You spent $50. We get to play together. You get to loan your copy to a friend. We gave money to a developer. You gave money to a pawn shop.
Which way is better?
Which situation is better depends on a bunch of factors, including: Do I care about multiplayer in the first place? Is my friend lending me something in return, giving me the chance to experience another game? How much will I get for this game of I decide to sell it or trade it in? Will that money help me afford a new game that I want?
These are some of many reasons why neither of these situations are objectively better for everyone.
They key is in your own words. "In my mind". In YOUR mind the benefits outweigh the loss. But not everyone has the same priorities as you.
And you are also falling into the trap of acting like the used market is only about buying used games to save money. It's also about being able to sell them to afford other games. If I can get a physical copy of a game for 40 bucks and then later sell it to someone for 20 so I can more easily afford a brand new 60 dollar game, or I can get a digital copy for twenty bucks, what's "better" is completely up to the individual preferences of the gamer.
Your argument here boils down to initial price and that's it, as if that is the only thing any gamer should ever be concerned with. You are pretty much dismissing any desire to actually own a game and all privileges that come with that as some sort of immature position to take. Sorry, that don't fly with me.
Also no one has proved that a good digital model and a good physical model can't exist simultaneously, and I'm seeing arguments that claim physical goods are the only thing keeping PSN and Marketplace prices too high without much to back it up. Steam has something those other stores don't have: competition. Steam gives us good prices because they want to give us a reason to buy games from them over something else. At first it was to buy their games over physical ones, now it's constantly having price battles with the likes of Amazon, GMG, GoG, Origin, and so on. The consoles? One store each. One. Do you honestly think of there is only one single place you can buy a Playstation 4 game, that prices will be as competitive and low as PC games are now? I highly doubt that. PC games are a completely different animal. Anyone can put out a PC game, and have tons of options to get it out there. Many more sweeping changes to the console market would have to happen before the digital landscape is similar enough.
From everything I've been hearing, the bolded has already started to happen on the Wii U E-Shop. Publishers are competing with eachother in the DD landscape. And they can do so quickly, and without hassle. Getting a retailer to do those sort of sales is damn near impossible.
The issue with trying to do both on one platform is simple, steam didn't have to worry about pissing off physical retailers by running sales that retailers couldn't keep up with. They don't have an expensive box that runs the games they're trying to sell. Console manufactures do have to worry about this, so they try to keep the games on their DD services somewhere around where new copies cost retail. Nintendo? Well they gave control of the pricing over to the publishers on the E-Shop. As far as I know, MS and Sony haven't gone that far yet. What I'm hoping for is they do, so the switch to DD can happen over this gen, as people see the benefits on the console side. Because it comes down to publishers having direct control over the pricing of their games. That's what gets the low prices that we see.
However I would be completely fine with it all switching over to DD only at launch. Just as people for used games don't care about money going to developers, I don't give a shit about people who don't have access to good enough internet to play games. I do, this is a hobby, and it's not necessary that they stay in the market. It's the epitome of "fuck you I got mine", but since it's a hobby, I don't feel guilty about it.
Maybe someone else will enter the marketplace to fill that void, but all of the new "exciting" console like things are going to be DD based. Steambox? DD based. Ouya? DD based.
Your "hobby" is another company's "business". And your line of thinking does not lead to profits.
Valve doesn't run their business on "Fuck you, got mine".
Zing? I never said that MS or Sony would do it because "fuck you, got mine". I said that's the way I feel about it. Plus, you're arguing on a "Fuck you, got mine" attitude as well. Only yours is based around telling developers fuck you, and your got mine is used games.
I'm arguing for the fair use of physical media.
You're now telling a massive chunk of the video game market to fuck off, because "you" have your internet.
I wish you the best of luck with that business model. I really do. I'm out.
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
It is not a fuck you got mine attitude to expect a physical product to behave like the vast majority of physical products throughout the history of time and object when someone tries to strip you of your ownership of something you paid for.
Also saying people who want to retain ownership privileges are "throwing a fit" is just exactly the kind of attitude I despise.
It is not some crazy irrational concept to want to actually own your shit. I own my movies. I own my books. I have owned my console games since console games existed. I do not want that to change and absolutely none of you have given me a good reason as to why I'm wrong to want to own my games.
If you don't care about being able to swap games with friends or trade in games to help afford the latest new release, fan fucking tastic for you. That doesn't mean it's okay to force everyone who enjoys this part of being a consumer to give up those privileges.
You people are arguing for the gutting of gaming consumer privileges and then expecting people not to fucking care about what they're losing.
Actually I'm arguing for DD games with steam style sales. I like being able to spend around $40 at christmas and pick up any games I missed throughout the year. As a side effect, yes, it would do what you describe. However, in my mine the benefit outweighs the cost completely. Arguing against a system where you can routinely get things for 75% off because then you wouldn't be able to buy those things at a big box store for maybe 50% used is "throwing a fit".
Hypothetical example:
A game cost $100 new. You can get it for $25 DD. You can get it used for $50. You want to share that game with your friend, so you buy it used. I want to play that game with my friend so I get both of us to buy it for $25. Between the two of us we spend $50. You spent $50. We get to play together. You get to loan your copy to a friend. We gave money to a developer. You gave money to a pawn shop.
Which way is better?
Which situation is better depends on a bunch of factors, including: Do I care about multiplayer in the first place? Is my friend lending me something in return, giving me the chance to experience another game? How much will I get for this game of I decide to sell it or trade it in? Will that money help me afford a new game that I want?
These are some of many reasons why neither of these situations are objectively better for everyone.
They key is in your own words. "In my mind". In YOUR mind the benefits outweigh the loss. But not everyone has the same priorities as you.
And you are also falling into the trap of acting like the used market is only about buying used games to save money. It's also about being able to sell them to afford other games. If I can get a physical copy of a game for 40 bucks and then later sell it to someone for 20 so I can more easily afford a brand new 60 dollar game, or I can get a digital copy for twenty bucks, what's "better" is completely up to the individual preferences of the gamer.
Your argument here boils down to initial price and that's it, as if that is the only thing any gamer should ever be concerned with. You are pretty much dismissing any desire to actually own a game and all privileges that come with that as some sort of immature position to take. Sorry, that don't fly with me.
Also no one has proved that a good digital model and a good physical model can't exist simultaneously, and I'm seeing arguments that claim physical goods are the only thing keeping PSN and Marketplace prices too high without much to back it up. Steam has something those other stores don't have: competition. Steam gives us good prices because they want to give us a reason to buy games from them over something else. At first it was to buy their games over physical ones, now it's constantly having price battles with the likes of Amazon, GMG, GoG, Origin, and so on. The consoles? One store each. One. Do you honestly think of there is only one single place you can buy a Playstation 4 game, that prices will be as competitive and low as PC games are now? I highly doubt that. PC games are a completely different animal. Anyone can put out a PC game, and have tons of options to get it out there. Many more sweeping changes to the console market would have to happen before the digital landscape is similar enough.
From everything I've been hearing, the bolded has already started to happen on the Wii U E-Shop. Publishers are competing with eachother in the DD landscape. And they can do so quickly, and without hassle. Getting a retailer to do those sort of sales is damn near impossible.
The issue with trying to do both on one platform is simple, steam didn't have to worry about pissing off physical retailers by running sales that retailers couldn't keep up with. They don't have an expensive box that runs the games they're trying to sell. Console manufactures do have to worry about this, so they try to keep the games on their DD services somewhere around where new copies cost retail. Nintendo? Well they gave control of the pricing over to the publishers on the E-Shop. As far as I know, MS and Sony haven't gone that far yet. What I'm hoping for is they do, so the switch to DD can happen over this gen, as people see the benefits on the console side. Because it comes down to publishers having direct control over the pricing of their games. That's what gets the low prices that we see.
However I would be completely fine with it all switching over to DD only at launch. Just as people for used games don't care about money going to developers, I don't give a shit about people who don't have access to good enough internet to play games. I do, this is a hobby, and it's not necessary that they stay in the market. It's the epitome of "fuck you I got mine", but since it's a hobby, I don't feel guilty about it.
Maybe someone else will enter the marketplace to fill that void, but all of the new "exciting" console like things are going to be DD based. Steambox? DD based. Ouya? DD based.
Your "hobby" is another company's "business". And your line of thinking does not lead to profits.
Valve doesn't run their business on "Fuck you, got mine".
Zing? I never said that MS or Sony would do it because "fuck you, got mine". I said that's the way I feel about it. Plus, you're arguing on a "Fuck you, got mine" attitude as well. Only yours is based around telling developers fuck you, and your got mine is used games.
I'm arguing for the fair use of physical media.
You're now telling a massive chunk of the video game market to fuck off, because "you" have your internet.
I wish you the best of luck with that business model. I really do. I'm out.
What? You do realize I'm talking about my personal preference for the way console games are delivered, right? I don't make this decision. I'm not a console manufacture. I don't have a business model, and I'm not trying to sell you anything. Why is it wrong for me to say what my preferred solution would be, even recognizing that it's a completely selfish idea, and one definitely isn't happening right now? Why is this getting you and LockedonTarget so upset? It's not happening right now, so there's nothing to worry about. Retail games are still going to exist this go round, and who knows what the internet infrastructural is going to be like by next gen. The fact that it wouldn't bother me shouldn't mean shit to you guys. I'm just a random guy arguing about videogames.
I don't know how many times I'm going to have to repeat this, but I'm perfectly fine with used games not being touched this generation. However I want DD to be pushed in a huge way, with a steam like pricing structure, and every game available DD at launch. If they switched over to DD only, I wouldn't shed a tear, but that's just because I don't care about retail games. You do, that's fine. I don't, that's fine. The gen after this next one, however, I fully expect to be purely DD only. But if bandwidth caps and the like aren't touched by then, then I guess that might not happen either.
If the game marketplace is going to have to shrink and change anyway, with outrageous development costs and all that, wouldn't it make sense to just go "fine, if you don't have an internet connection, this is no longer for you. Find another hobby, goodbye" and have the market shrink on your own terms, and get to the better system now instead of waiting for another 5-7 years for the next console generation, limping along all the while, holding onto the dead weight of people who aren't even willing to buy your game new or recommend it to their friend instead of just giving it to them?
Haha yeah, abandoning a huge amount of your customers would turn out just fine. I'm sure.
Most of Canada has shitty bandwidth caps. Guess the whole country should be told to go fuck itself then?
Also you seem to be implying that everyone who does not have a good Internet setup for an all-digital gaming world doesn't buy new games and that's just...what?
It seems to work fine for steam. It's not like the vast majority of popular steam games are 120mb or something. They're often times several gigs larger than the console ports.
It works fine for Steam because the people who play PC games are much more likely to be able to handle these things.
The PC and console gaming markets, and the overall makeup of the consumers in those markets, are not identical. It is wrong to treat them as identical.
The gap between the two markets is smaller than it used to be, but the gap is still there. "It works for PC gaming" is not anywhere close to the be-all end-all argument some of you think it is.
It is if you assume the market would change to be more like the market for steam if the product were made to be more like steam. This change would benefit publishers (the adopt these types of sales whenever they can), and it would benefit the console manufactures (valve makes a huge amount of money off of steam), and it would (I'm going off of how much people love steam here) benefit people who would stick around through the change.
Again, the idea isn't to please everyone. The idea is to make console gaming a viable industry for publishers/developers. Some consumers may get left behind when/if that happens. If you don't like the changes to a market, you don't have to stay in that market.
So, in other words. Fuck most of Canada, and fuck me.
I have a bandwidth cap and have no options to get an internet connection without a bandwidth cap. I have trouble fitting in one major game release without going over. And if I go over I get hit with fees and get my connection throttled.
What you want will literally push me and a lot of people like me out of the market. I wouldn't even get a choice. Destroying my hobby and my passion in one simple move.
So forgive me if your "I got mine!" attitude makes me more than a little upset.
Hey, tell that to someone that works on games. I'm sure them having to go out and look for jobs because the industry is bleeding is totally the same as you no longer being able to enjoy your hobby. I'm sure the people at whatever development house was closed this half of the week totally understand and feel your pain.
What an awful and irrelevant strawman argument.
Yeah people are losing their jobs because I want to pay them for their games. That makes a whole lot of fucking sense.
And the idea that cutting out a huge amount of consumers is going to somehow fix the problem and make the industry more money has no basis in reality. We are not talking about shedding a fraction of a percent here. We are talking about ditching millions of paying customers.
Oh and it's funny how you are going with the "poor people losing their jobs" argument when eliminating physical media will eliminate lots of jobs.
If the game marketplace is going to have to shrink and change anyway, with outrageous development costs and all that, wouldn't it make sense to just go "fine, if you don't have an internet connection, this is no longer for you. Find another hobby, goodbye" and have the market shrink on your own terms, and get to the better system now instead of waiting for another 5-7 years for the next console generation, limping along all the while, holding onto the dead weight of people who aren't even willing to buy your game new or recommend it to their friend instead of just giving it to them?
Haha yeah, abandoning a huge amount of your customers would turn out just fine. I'm sure.
Most of Canada has shitty bandwidth caps. Guess the whole country should be told to go fuck itself then?
Also you seem to be implying that everyone who does not have a good Internet setup for an all-digital gaming world doesn't buy new games and that's just...what?
It seems to work fine for steam. It's not like the vast majority of popular steam games are 120mb or something. They're often times several gigs larger than the console ports.
It works fine for Steam because the people who play PC games are much more likely to be able to handle these things.
The PC and console gaming markets, and the overall makeup of the consumers in those markets, are not identical. It is wrong to treat them as identical.
The gap between the two markets is smaller than it used to be, but the gap is still there. "It works for PC gaming" is not anywhere close to the be-all end-all argument some of you think it is.
It is if you assume the market would change to be more like the market for steam if the product were made to be more like steam. This change would benefit publishers (the adopt these types of sales whenever they can), and it would benefit the console manufactures (valve makes a huge amount of money off of steam), and it would (I'm going off of how much people love steam here) benefit people who would stick around through the change.
Again, the idea isn't to please everyone. The idea is to make console gaming a viable industry for publishers/developers. Some consumers may get left behind when/if that happens. If you don't like the changes to a market, you don't have to stay in that market.
So, in other words. Fuck most of Canada, and fuck me.
I have a bandwidth cap and have no options to get an internet connection without a bandwidth cap. I have trouble fitting in one major game release without going over. And if I go over I get hit with fees and get my connection throttled.
What you want will literally push me and a lot of people like me out of the market. I wouldn't even get a choice. Destroying my hobby and my passion in one simple move.
So forgive me if your "I got mine!" attitude makes me more than a little upset.
Hey, tell that to someone that works on games. I'm sure them having to go out and look for jobs because the industry is bleeding is totally the same as you no longer being able to enjoy your hobby. I'm sure the people at whatever development house was closed this half of the week totally understand and feel your pain.
What an awful and irrelevant strawman argument.
Yeah people are losing their jobs because I want to pay them for their games. That makes a whole lot of fucking sense.
And the idea that cutting out a huge amount of consumers is going to somehow fix the problem and make the industry more money has no basis in reality. We are not talking about shedding a fraction of a percent here. We are talking about ditching millions of paying customers.
Oh and it's funny how you are going with the "poor people losing their jobs" argument when eliminating physical media will eliminate lots of jobs.
Guess what! I didn't say that! However you did a big appeal for emotion there in that post, as if you losing your hobby actually matters to developers/publishers looking to change their business so they can still have a livelyhood. It doesn't. The comment was going "HEY! THIS IS THE SCOPE OF THE CONVERSATION!" If it would mean they could stay open, developers would cut their fanbase in half in a second. With a sword. Like, actually murder them. This whole discussion is based around the premise that the industry is in trouble, and something has to give in order to keep them afloat. DD is one idea. Limiting used games is another. The industry shrinking is another. And eliminating used games altogether (whiles still keeping retail games around) is yet another. But when we're talking about these ideas, the basic premise is if they do it, it's to make the industry better. If it doesn't make the industry better, then obviously one of the other ideas is what they should adopt. I don't want anyone to be pushed out of the market. But if it's something that will make the industry better, I really don't care in the long run.
Unless the change was literally "Death of Rats exiting the market will solve all of our problems. But just him, no one else" I don't care what they have to do. Hell, even with that, I can find a different hobby. I'm interested in a lot of things.
And I object to the idea that forcefully cutting out a massive section of your customers is somehow going to make the industry better.
Dumping me and just me isn't going to matter to them, but suggesting they dump millions of people at once when the current amount of sales already isn't sustaining the market? There is absolutely no reason to think that's a good idea right now.
You don't consider it a problem to engage in practices that harm undeserving consumers. I consider it a huge problem. To make matters worse you keep suggesting that these things will make things better for everyone yet when it's pointed out it could make things worse for a significant chunk of the parties involved you say you don't care.
Do you not understand that when I say if I mean if. If it makes the industry better. Only if.
If this, then that. If it makes the industry better, then I don't care that it pushes people out of the market.
If we were talking about something important to someone's livelihood, then I would care.
And when I say "I wouldn't care if they did this at the moment" I mean just that. I'm not advocating they SHOULD do that at the moment, I'm saying I don't care if they do. I am advocating for DD being pushed, but not for it being the only way to play console games. I understand that that's not a realistic idea at the moment.
And when I say that you're throwing a fit, I mean it. Yes, I think it's a problem to engage in practices that harm undeserving consumers. But we're not talking about any such practices. Unless you have a vital need for videogames, being cut off from the market doesn't in any way harm you. It takes you out of the market. Saying that being taken out of the market is harming you is just a tad bit melodramatic, don't you think? Kinda like if I were to say the prices of new cars are out of my price range, so the car industry is hurting me. Or that I can't have a dog in my apartment complex, so my apartment complex is harming me. An optional luxury being taken out of your hands doesn't harm you. Being prescribed a known faulty cancer medication would be an example of what you're talking about. Feeding your customers meat you know is spoiled is what you're talking about.
Ultimately I am against the idea that in order the save the industry, consumers must be punished. No. If publishers are failing at making enough money, then it's up to them to shoulder the burden. Stop pushing the goddamn AAA model so much. Stop funnelling ridiculous budgets into games in the hopes that by some small chance you will get that Call of Duty money. Stop piling unrealistic expectations on your devs. Stop pushing more and more shinies when you can't afford to make the freaking shinies!
And stop blaming the gamers when you fall flat in your face.
Know your limits. Play to your strengths. Budget realistically.
THQ is gone because they made marketing and budget mistakes, not because of used games or non-optimal DD. it's not Gamestop's fault they made the boneheaded decision to mass produce the friggin' UDraw for the HD twins, nor is it their fault THQ poured way too much money into a game like Homefront that nobody wanted, or made Darksiders II another expensive AAA affair despite the first one only doing kind of okay while expecting the sequel to sell much better than the first one.
Do you not understand that when I say if I mean if. If it makes the industry better. Only if.
If this, then that. If it makes the industry better, then I don't care that it pushes people out of the market.
If we were talking about something important to someone's livelihood, then I would care.
And when I say "I wouldn't care if they did this at the moment" I mean just that. I'm not advocating they SHOULD do that at the moment, I'm saying I don't care if they do. I am advocating for DD being pushed, but not for it being the only way to play console games. I understand that that's not a realistic idea at the moment.
And when I say that you're throwing a fit, I mean it. Yes, I think it's a problem to engage in practices that harm undeserving consumers. But we're not talking about any such practices. Unless you have a vital need for videogames, being cut off from the market doesn't in any way harm you. It takes you out of the market. Saying that being taken out of the market is harming you is just a tad bit melodramatic, don't you think? Kinda like if I were to say the prices of new cars are out of my price range, so the car industry is hurting me. Or that I can't have a dog in my apartment complex, so my apartment complex is harming me. An optional luxury being taken out of your hands doesn't harm you. Being prescribed a known faulty cancer medication would be an example of what you're talking about. Feeding your customers meat you know is spoiled is what you're talking about.
You are really reaching here. "Harm" doesn't have to be so dramatic. You know damn well what I mean by harm and you're playing a semantics game to dismiss the valid issues I and others are taking with anti-consumer practices.
But you don't care. You've come out and said it. If you had done this hours ago it could have saved us a bunch of time. You don't care about the consumers. I can never accept an argument coming from that position. So we're done. I should have realized this wasn't worth my time the second you decided to start dismissing valid concerns as hissy fits and namecalled. Washing my hands of you right now because all you've managed to do is make me hate the arguments against physical products and used games even more.
What we have learned here is that some PC gamers are the abused boyfriends of the gaming industry. And like a lot of people who have internalized their abuse, they are shocked and horrified when someone else takes on look at their abuser and go "Fuck this. I'm out."
I mean, there's one poster here suggesting that saying I would be done with console gaming is crazy talk. Nope. If it gets too ugly and I start to feel bad paying $60 a pop to a company that makes me feel bad, then I have no problem finding other fun things to do with my money.
If it would mean they could stay open, developers would cut their fanbase in half in a second. With a sword. Like, actually murder them.
You started out a bit goosy, but now under stress you've veered into the ridiculously insane. Even accepting exaggeration, I must point out that "business ethics" is a thing, though perhaps only in wishful fantasy. And, of course, saying, "I find your terms unacceptable and harmful to my interests, so I will not purchase you product," is just melodramatic whining. Though, blessedly, you are not advocating for anything, you are saying nothing, you are just throwing out ideas, so no one has any reason to take offense or object. Wonderful.
I only wish you had informed me that you would be wasting my time earlier, perhaps in your first post.
Warning: the preceding post may be more sarcastic than it appears. Proceed at own risk. Individual results may vary. Offers not valid in Canada or where prohibited by fraud statutes.
It is not a fuck you got mine attitude to expect a physical product to behave like the vast majority of physical products throughout the history of time and object when someone tries to strip you of your ownership of something you paid for.
And this here is the issue.
You believe that the game being printed on a physical disk somehow makes it completely fundamentally different. Alot of other people just see it as "Steam game on a disk".
I payed for The Orange Box. I own it. I can't loan it to a friend.
What we have learned here is that some PC gamers are the abused boyfriends of the gaming industry. And like a lot of people who have internalized their abuse, they are shocked and horrified when someone else takes on look at their abuser and go "Fuck this. I'm out."
Yeah man, PC gamers are so abused. They suffer so terribly but can't even see it. Steam is the rod that beats us back into line.
What we have learned here is that some PC gamers are the abused boyfriends of the gaming industry. And like a lot of people who have internalized their abuse, they are shocked and horrified when someone else takes on look at their abuser and go "Fuck this. I'm out."
Yeah man, PC gamers are so abused. They suffer so terribly but can't even see it. Steam is the rod that beats us back into line.
What we have learned here is that some PC gamers are the abused boyfriends of the gaming industry. And like a lot of people who have internalized their abuse, they are shocked and horrified when someone else takes on look at their abuser and go "Fuck this. I'm out."
Yeah man, PC gamers are so abused. They suffer so terribly but can't even see it. Steam is the rod that beats us back into line.
What we have learned here is that some PC gamers are the abused boyfriends of the gaming industry. And like a lot of people who have internalized their abuse, they are shocked and horrified when someone else takes on look at their abuser and go "Fuck this. I'm out."
Yeah man, PC gamers are so abused. They suffer so terribly but can't even see it. Steam is the rod that beats us back into line.
"My name is Toby, Master Valve, my name is Toby!"
Well, that was pretty racist.
.....
How?
Tell you what, go up to a group of black people and start making master/slave whipping jokes while saying "My name is Toby!" See how they react.
What we have learned here is that some PC gamers are the abused boyfriends of the gaming industry. And like a lot of people who have internalized their abuse, they are shocked and horrified when someone else takes on look at their abuser and go "Fuck this. I'm out."
Yeah man, PC gamers are so abused. They suffer so terribly but can't even see it. Steam is the rod that beats us back into line.
"My name is Toby, Master Valve, my name is Toby!"
Well, that was pretty racist.
.....
How?
Tell you what, go up to a group of black people and start making master/slave whipping jokes while saying "My name is Toby!" See how they react.
Sure, when you go to a group of people who've escaped from an abusive relationship and see how they feel about characterizing digital distribution as spousal abuse. See how they react.
It is not a fuck you got mine attitude to expect a physical product to behave like the vast majority of physical products throughout the history of time and object when someone tries to strip you of your ownership of something you paid for.
And this here is the issue.
You believe that the game being printed on a physical disk somehow makes it completely fundamentally different. Alot of other people just see it as "Steam game on a disk".
I payed for The Orange Box. I own it. I can't loan it to a friend.
If the game on the disc doesn't require activation against a server -- even if it requires activation using a code printed on the box, but can perform that activation without being on the internet -- it is fundamentally different. If Steam ceased to exist tomorrow I could (probably) play the games I currently have installed via offline mode. If I ever lose my hard drive or need to upgrade my PC in a fashion that doesn't retain all of my settings and data? They're gone and I can't ever get them back. Any games I don't already have installed, or don't have installed 'enough' for offline mode to work? Also gone. Can never play them again, just because the company I bought them from is no longer in business.
The game on the disc, that doesn't use a remote server for anything? I can play that shit 'til doomsday if I want to. Twenty years from now I won't be able to play a lot of current PC titles anymore because their activation servers will no longer exist, even if I still have the disc. I'll still be able to play Super Nintendo games that are already twenty years old. Shit, I'll still be able to play the exact same games if I happen to have the 360 or PS3 version instead of the PC one.
You don't own the Orange Box. You have a key to a building where the Orange Box is and you can go in any time you feel like, day or night, and play it for as long as you want. But if that building gets torn down? No more Orange Box for you.
Which is fine. I don't mind renting shit. I have a ton of Steam games. Most of the games I play today I doubt I would even want to go back and play again in a few years. But it's silly to pretend that a download-only, internet activation required piece of software is exactly the same thing as a completely self-contained piece of media.
What we have learned here is that some PC gamers are the abused boyfriends of the gaming industry. And like a lot of people who have internalized their abuse, they are shocked and horrified when someone else takes on look at their abuser and go "Fuck this. I'm out."
Yeah man, PC gamers are so abused. They suffer so terribly but can't even see it. Steam is the rod that beats us back into line.
"My name is Toby, Master Valve, my name is Toby!"
Well, that was pretty racist.
.....
How?
Tell you what, go up to a group of black people and start making master/slave whipping jokes while saying "My name is Toby!" See how they react.
Sure, when you go to a group of people who've escaped from an abusive relationship and see how they feel about characterizing digital distribution as spousal abuse. See how they react.
What we have learned here is that some PC gamers are the abused boyfriends of the gaming industry. And like a lot of people who have internalized their abuse, they are shocked and horrified when someone else takes on look at their abuser and go "Fuck this. I'm out."
Yeah man, PC gamers are so abused. They suffer so terribly but can't even see it. Steam is the rod that beats us back into line.
"My name is Toby, Master Valve, my name is Toby!"
Well, that was pretty racist.
.....
How?
Tell you what, go up to a group of black people and start making master/slave whipping jokes while saying "My name is Toby!" See how they react.
Sure, when you go to a group of people who've escaped from an abusive relationship and see how they feel about characterizing digital distribution as spousal abuse. See how they react.
I am looking at that right now.
Uh huh.
Look, you made an incredibly stupid comparison, I used hyperbole to point it out. Get over it, don't make stupid comparisons again.
It's true, if you activate a game on steam you don't own it. The EU recently ruled in favour of consumers being able to sell on digital products. Is steam worried? Not really, because according to their TOS you're leasing games from them for a one time fee.
I'm fine with that though as long as I'm buying their games at the sale prices. I refuse to drop full rrp for a product I don't own.
It's true, if you activate a game on steam you don't own it. The EU recently ruled in favour of consumers being able to sell on digital products. Is steam worried? Not really, because according to their TOS you're buying a leasing games from them for a one time fee.
I'm fine with that though as long as I'm buying their games at the sale prices. I refuse to drop full rrp for a product I don't own.
The last I read, Steam is responding by building a used game auction house through Steam that will work worldwide. And the EU and the U.S. have repeatedly ruled that those TOS aren't worth the digital paper they are written on.
The question about whether software companies have the right to restrict resale for license is also pretty fuzzy right now. The Autodesk case that overturned the right, reversing a lower court ruling upholding the right to resale, is currently working its way toward the Supreme Court. In the EU, the right of resale has more teeth.
It's true, if you activate a game on steam you don't own it. The EU recently ruled in favour of consumers being able to sell on digital products. Is steam worried? Not really, because according to their TOS you're leasing games from them for a one time fee.
I'm fine with that though as long as I'm buying their games at the sale prices. I refuse to drop full rrp for a product I don't own.
I don't really even mind dropping full retail on a digital-only game if I'm excited enough about the game. I've never sold a game to Gamestop or wherever and there are very few games that I have any strong desire to re-play that've been released in recent years. I'd like to be able to loan steam games to a friend, but I'm basically alright with paying $50 or whatever for 10-40 hours of entertainment and then being done with it. It's cheaper than seeing an equivalent number of hours' worth of movies unless I rent them.
I just find it silly to pretend that there's no difference. If digital-only is the way of the future then fine, but I'd almost rather pay to 'rent' the games with a specified renewal period instead of 'buying' them and keeping them until some nebulous point in the future when they just go away.
It's kind of a shame, though, that eventually entire generations of video games will just be gone after the consoles cycle or the companies go bust or whatever. Kids of the PS5 (or whatever) era will never be able to show their great-grandkids what gaming was like 'in their day', before smell-o-vision games, except I guess through the future equivalent of youtube gameplay videos.
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Deebaseron my way to work in a suit and a tieAhhhh...come on fucking guyRegistered Userregular
Ultimately I am against the idea that in order the save the industry, consumers must be punished.
Only a small subset of consumers is being "punished", the tilapia tier. Also, as someone who has moved a few times, physical media is dumb, wasteful, and inconvenient. I used to have boxes and boxes of CD/DVD/BluRay, but now I have less than 10. Good fucking riddance.
Ultimately I am against the idea that in order the save the industry, consumers must be punished.
Only a small subset of consumers is being "punished", the tilapia tier. Also, as someone who has moved a few times, physical media is dumb, wasteful, and inconvenient. I used to have boxes and boxes of CD/DVD/BluRay, but now I have less than 10. Good fucking riddance.
The "tilapia tier?" Please tell me that's not code for "poor people."
Because, you might not know this, poor people buy a lot of games. With used games and trading, it's actually one of the more cost effective hobbies for people.
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Deebaseron my way to work in a suit and a tieAhhhh...come on fucking guyRegistered Userregular
Ultimately I am against the idea that in order the save the industry, consumers must be punished.
Only a small subset of consumers is being "punished", the tilapia tier. Also, as someone who has moved a few times, physical media is dumb, wasteful, and inconvenient. I used to have boxes and boxes of CD/DVD/BluRay, but now I have less than 10. Good fucking riddance.
The "tilapia tier?" Please tell me that's not code for "poor people."
Because, you might not know this, poor people buy a lot of games. With used games and trading, it's actually one of the more cost effective hobbies for people.
Those that rely on the used games and trading in the secondary market are the tilapia tier, not necessarily "poor people". It was a more artful way of saying "bottom feeders endlessly recycling poop".
Say what you want, but you mean poor people and you're showing your colors even behind your tired euphemisms.
No, he is saying the used game marketplace. Not "lol poors"
Deebs isn't SKFM, he isn't lighting his spring wardrobe on fire when summer hits. And there are plenty of people who make decent money who spend 55 on a copy of a game instead of 60 and probably don't even know that the sale they just did is actively fucking over the game maker and may hurt the chance of getting a sequel for that game.
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Let's play Mario Kart or something...
People really misunderstand the much referenced EU ruling. The gist of it is that if you are able to resell the product, then you can't be forbidden to do so by the EULA. The analogy to games would be that it is legal to resell your XBL or Steam account, not your discs. If the setup is that you are unable to resell it due to limitations, then you're out of luck.
While the game industry is in trouble, the many deaths of developers isn't really part of it. The developer situation has pretty much always been fucked up. Their contracts with publishers have always been chokeholds (Where they are unlikely to make more money if the product is a success, and the publisher retains the IP rights so that they can't shop around with their success), and developers unable to sustain themselves is a tale of the ages. The big difference is that before the economic woes EA and Activision were more likely to pick up flailing studios and turn them into something sad. There is a whole other thread of discussion there, especially if you throw in that the games industry is probably one of the top five worst industry for workers in the western world. No job security, continual 'crunch,' and if you don't like it, we've got this horde of 22 year olds whose dreamjob you currently hold. Remember EA_Spouse?
The industry is in trouble because the total amount of money spent on games is shrinking (though by exactly how much is hard to tell, since digital data is hard to come by, especially since Steam doesn't publish any numbers). They haven't really adjusted to this situation yet, and keep on making very expensive games with large marketing budgets (These can be up to 30% of a games total cost). Something has got to give, and part of it is the emergence of stylized cheaper games, often for a lot less money, and part of it is the shrinking of the AAA field. The death of THQ was more telling, but the lead balloon that is the uDraw had a lot to do with it (Ultimately they went under with a debt of around 100m and assets that were worth about 70m at auction, where the estimated loss on the uDraw was also 100m). THQ was a decent sized player, but their games were a tier below (mostly in the sense of budget/game) the big three: EA, Activision, Ubisoft. Those three all look fairly healthy, and all have annual games that make them money.
I will also say that there is a difference on backwards compatibility between consoles and PC games. PC games are BC inheritently because there are no generations, but incremental adjustments. There are a few games out there that don't play nice with the 32-64bit transition, and a few that can't recognize modern videocards, but otherwise any game past the DOS era (1996 is the year most games came with a win95 installer) will probably either just work or require minor tweaks.
If Sony or MS would come out and say 'we guarantee right now that all your purchases will keep on working for another generation' then maybe things would be different. But this is not at all guaranteed.
There's one more bit of trickery with XBL already in play: XBL accounts are personal within the household too. This is already in effect if you own a 360 and a GWFL game: If you log into your GWFL game, your 360 will log itself out. You can't watch Netflix while you play Batman:AC on your PC, nor can anyone in your household. Restrictions like this have to be conscious decisions (since they require quite a bit of architecture behind the scenes) and make me wary about the supposed generous actions of console developers in the future. Why will they put work into BC when they could instead port, call it 'TrueHD', and resell the same game? The latter has been there modus operandi for the past decade.
Ultimately I am against the idea that in order the save the industry, consumers must be punished.
Only a small subset of consumers is being "punished", the tilapia tier. Also, as someone who has moved a few times, physical media is dumb, wasteful, and inconvenient. I used to have boxes and boxes of CD/DVD/BluRay, but now I have less than 10. Good fucking riddance.
How does digital media protect you from, say, Steam's servers going down and not coming back up? If you can't play your games after that happens, then you're really only renting them for the same price you used to buy them for (approximately).
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syndalisGetting ClassyOn the WallRegistered User, Loves Apple Productsregular
Ultimately I am against the idea that in order the save the industry, consumers must be punished.
Only a small subset of consumers is being "punished", the tilapia tier. Also, as someone who has moved a few times, physical media is dumb, wasteful, and inconvenient. I used to have boxes and boxes of CD/DVD/BluRay, but now I have less than 10. Good fucking riddance.
How does digital media protect you from, say, Steam's servers going down and not coming back up? If you can't play your games after that happens, then you're really only renting them for the same price you used to buy them for (approximately).
And that's an argument I havent heard since 2006 or so.
Valve has made it clear that if some ridiculous future occurred where Steam had to be shuttered, they would allow all titles to be downloaded and taken into offline mode forever.
If Microsoft or Sony ever decided to get out of this industry that they have invested billions of dollars into, they would do the same thing or else get sued into oblivion.
edit: this is why having your digital library managed by a bigass company that isn't going anywhere (Apple, Microsoft, Sony, Valve, etc) is preferable.
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Ultimately I am against the idea that in order the save the industry, consumers must be punished.
Only a small subset of consumers is being "punished", the tilapia tier. Also, as someone who has moved a few times, physical media is dumb, wasteful, and inconvenient. I used to have boxes and boxes of CD/DVD/BluRay, but now I have less than 10. Good fucking riddance.
How does digital media protect you from, say, Steam's servers going down and not coming back up? If you can't play your games after that happens, then you're really only renting them for the same price you used to buy them for (approximately).
And that's an argument I havent heard since 2006 or so.
Valve has made it clear that if some ridiculous future occurred where Steam had to be shuttered, they would allow all titles to be downloaded and taken into offline mode forever.
Have they put in it a contract (say, the EULA)? Otherwise they may end up without the legal authority to do so when the time comes.
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syndalisGetting ClassyOn the WallRegistered User, Loves Apple Productsregular
Ultimately I am against the idea that in order the save the industry, consumers must be punished.
Only a small subset of consumers is being "punished", the tilapia tier. Also, as someone who has moved a few times, physical media is dumb, wasteful, and inconvenient. I used to have boxes and boxes of CD/DVD/BluRay, but now I have less than 10. Good fucking riddance.
How does digital media protect you from, say, Steam's servers going down and not coming back up? If you can't play your games after that happens, then you're really only renting them for the same price you used to buy them for (approximately).
And that's an argument I havent heard since 2006 or so.
Valve has made it clear that if some ridiculous future occurred where Steam had to be shuttered, they would allow all titles to be downloaded and taken into offline mode forever.
Have they put in it a contract (say, the EULA)? Otherwise they may end up without the legal authority to do so when the time comes.
I know it's been their line. But, if it's not in a contract, they can simply be wrong about what they would be allowed to do in that case and you would have no substantial recourse.
I don't doubt Valve would let everyone download their libraries leading up to a planned Steam shutdown. I also don't doubt that would go directly out the window if they were hemorrhaging money THQ-style over a big Steambox failure or a legal brouhaha over Half Life 3 or something.
And while MS and Sony might not be going anywhere in a hurry as companies, there's nothing stopping them from shuttering their video game arms in the event that they turn unprofitable. I'm pretty sure the XBL and PSN terms of service indicate that you have access to your shit so long as you have a paid subscription. If they stop offering new subscriptions, once your shit runs out, oh well. There's not even anything to sue them over at that point. And if someone did come up with a case, the remaining corporate entity probably has the money to squash it but, in the optimistic case that the plaintiff actually came away victorious, you'd be entitled to some small cut of the after-legal-fees settlement and still not have your games (or even any way to buy them again with the payout, since the service no longer exists).
It hasn't happened yet but with the number of companies going under in recent years and the number of developers deciding to roll their own authentication or content delivery systems it's pretty much a matter of time. How long do you think EA would have to think about shutting down Origin if they did the math and came up with it being cheaper to turn off the servers than to pay out a theoretical civil suit over having done it?
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syndalisGetting ClassyOn the WallRegistered User, Loves Apple Productsregular
edited February 2013
Right.
And your house could catch fire and all of your physical copies will be lost forever, wheras a digital distribution model will not only protect the games themselves by allowing you to download them again on your new, not burned computer... you also will likely still have your save games.
Or a burglar could come in and steal your shit while you are on vacation.
It is significantly more statistically likely that your house will go up in flames or you get robbed than Sony or Microsoft get out of the gaming business in the next 10-20 years.
syndalis on
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Let's play Mario Kart or something...
And your house could catch fire and all of your physical copies will be lost forever, wheras a digital distribution model will not only protect the games themselves by allowing you to download them again on your new, not burned computer... you also will likely still have your save games.
Or a burglar could come in and steal your shit while you are on vacation.
It is significantly more statistically likely that your house will go up in flames or you get robbed than Sony or Microsoft get out of the gaming business in the next 10-20 years.
And because I own the physical media, I can take steps to prevent these cases from happening. Offsite backups are damn near trivial these days and fireproof safes are a thing everyone should have for at least some things. In theory you could also backup physical media, but that's on much dicier legal footing.
There is nothing you can do to protect yourself from EA, Microsoft, Sony, or Valve being unable to keep their servers going for legal reasons.
It's true, if you activate a game on steam you don't own it. The EU recently ruled in favour of consumers being able to sell on digital products. Is steam worried? Not really, because according to their TOS you're leasing games from them for a one time fee.
I'm fine with that though as long as I'm buying their games at the sale prices. I refuse to drop full rrp for a product I don't own.
I don't really even mind dropping full retail on a digital-only game if I'm excited enough about the game. I've never sold a game to Gamestop or wherever and there are very few games that I have any strong desire to re-play that've been released in recent years. I'd like to be able to loan steam games to a friend, but I'm basically alright with paying $50 or whatever for 10-40 hours of entertainment and then being done with it. It's cheaper than seeing an equivalent number of hours' worth of movies unless I rent them.
I just find it silly to pretend that there's no difference. If digital-only is the way of the future then fine, but I'd almost rather pay to 'rent' the games with a specified renewal period instead of 'buying' them and keeping them until some nebulous point in the future when they just go away.
It's kind of a shame, though, that eventually entire generations of video games will just be gone after the consoles cycle or the companies go bust or whatever. Kids of the PS5 (or whatever) era will never be able to show their great-grandkids what gaming was like 'in their day', before smell-o-vision games, except I guess through the future equivalent of youtube gameplay videos.
I doubt it to be honest. Remakes and re-releases are popular now, it's a relitivly cheap way from publishers to get another game out without having to spend dev hours making one.
I see no reason why 30 years from now I won't be able to download FFXV special re-release edition for my PS7 or whatever.
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syndalisGetting ClassyOn the WallRegistered User, Loves Apple Productsregular
And your house could catch fire and all of your physical copies will be lost forever, wheras a digital distribution model will not only protect the games themselves by allowing you to download them again on your new, not burned computer... you also will likely still have your save games.
Or a burglar could come in and steal your shit while you are on vacation.
It is significantly more statistically likely that your house will go up in flames or you get robbed than Sony or Microsoft get out of the gaming business in the next 10-20 years.
And because I own the physical media, I can take steps to prevent these cases from happening. Offsite backups are damn near trivial these days and fireproof safes are a thing everyone should have for at least some things. In theory you could also backup physical media, but that's on much dicier legal footing.
There is nothing you can do to protect yourself from EA, Microsoft, Sony, or Valve being unable to keep their servers going for legal reasons.
You are playing to an extreme fringe here now.
the number of people who lock their xboxes and game collections in fireproof safes? Who have multi-terabyte backup solutions at home to handle their game collections, and the necessary hacking to let the game console play said backups?
Versus everyone who uses a digital distribution system gaining the security and benefits of having the right to download at any time, to any device their profile is active on.
Were it not for Gamestop and luddites, this generation could have been awesome from a pricing and an accessibility level.
What's going to be funny is if Valve rolls out with a Steambox, and it becomes known as the easy to use console that routinely puts AAA games for sale at 50-75% off and has an ocean of great indy titles, and never makes it hard to find old games, and the market responds by a big reduction of the marketshare of Sony and Microsoft over a few years.
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Hey, tell that to someone that works on games. I'm sure them having to go out and look for jobs because the industry is bleeding is totally the same as you no longer being able to enjoy your hobby. I'm sure the people at whatever development house was closed this half of the week totally understand and feel your pain.
I'm arguing for the fair use of physical media.
You're now telling a massive chunk of the video game market to fuck off, because "you" have your internet.
I wish you the best of luck with that business model. I really do. I'm out.
My Let's Play Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC2go70QLfwGq-hW4nvUqmog
What? You do realize I'm talking about my personal preference for the way console games are delivered, right? I don't make this decision. I'm not a console manufacture. I don't have a business model, and I'm not trying to sell you anything. Why is it wrong for me to say what my preferred solution would be, even recognizing that it's a completely selfish idea, and one definitely isn't happening right now? Why is this getting you and LockedonTarget so upset? It's not happening right now, so there's nothing to worry about. Retail games are still going to exist this go round, and who knows what the internet infrastructural is going to be like by next gen. The fact that it wouldn't bother me shouldn't mean shit to you guys. I'm just a random guy arguing about videogames.
I don't know how many times I'm going to have to repeat this, but I'm perfectly fine with used games not being touched this generation. However I want DD to be pushed in a huge way, with a steam like pricing structure, and every game available DD at launch. If they switched over to DD only, I wouldn't shed a tear, but that's just because I don't care about retail games. You do, that's fine. I don't, that's fine. The gen after this next one, however, I fully expect to be purely DD only. But if bandwidth caps and the like aren't touched by then, then I guess that might not happen either.
What an awful and irrelevant strawman argument.
Yeah people are losing their jobs because I want to pay them for their games. That makes a whole lot of fucking sense.
And the idea that cutting out a huge amount of consumers is going to somehow fix the problem and make the industry more money has no basis in reality. We are not talking about shedding a fraction of a percent here. We are talking about ditching millions of paying customers.
Oh and it's funny how you are going with the "poor people losing their jobs" argument when eliminating physical media will eliminate lots of jobs.
My Let's Play Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC2go70QLfwGq-hW4nvUqmog
Guess what! I didn't say that! However you did a big appeal for emotion there in that post, as if you losing your hobby actually matters to developers/publishers looking to change their business so they can still have a livelyhood. It doesn't. The comment was going "HEY! THIS IS THE SCOPE OF THE CONVERSATION!" If it would mean they could stay open, developers would cut their fanbase in half in a second. With a sword. Like, actually murder them. This whole discussion is based around the premise that the industry is in trouble, and something has to give in order to keep them afloat. DD is one idea. Limiting used games is another. The industry shrinking is another. And eliminating used games altogether (whiles still keeping retail games around) is yet another. But when we're talking about these ideas, the basic premise is if they do it, it's to make the industry better. If it doesn't make the industry better, then obviously one of the other ideas is what they should adopt. I don't want anyone to be pushed out of the market. But if it's something that will make the industry better, I really don't care in the long run.
Unless the change was literally "Death of Rats exiting the market will solve all of our problems. But just him, no one else" I don't care what they have to do. Hell, even with that, I can find a different hobby. I'm interested in a lot of things.
Dumping me and just me isn't going to matter to them, but suggesting they dump millions of people at once when the current amount of sales already isn't sustaining the market? There is absolutely no reason to think that's a good idea right now.
You don't consider it a problem to engage in practices that harm undeserving consumers. I consider it a huge problem. To make matters worse you keep suggesting that these things will make things better for everyone yet when it's pointed out it could make things worse for a significant chunk of the parties involved you say you don't care.
My Let's Play Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC2go70QLfwGq-hW4nvUqmog
If this, then that. If it makes the industry better, then I don't care that it pushes people out of the market.
If we were talking about something important to someone's livelihood, then I would care.
And when I say "I wouldn't care if they did this at the moment" I mean just that. I'm not advocating they SHOULD do that at the moment, I'm saying I don't care if they do. I am advocating for DD being pushed, but not for it being the only way to play console games. I understand that that's not a realistic idea at the moment.
And when I say that you're throwing a fit, I mean it. Yes, I think it's a problem to engage in practices that harm undeserving consumers. But we're not talking about any such practices. Unless you have a vital need for videogames, being cut off from the market doesn't in any way harm you. It takes you out of the market. Saying that being taken out of the market is harming you is just a tad bit melodramatic, don't you think? Kinda like if I were to say the prices of new cars are out of my price range, so the car industry is hurting me. Or that I can't have a dog in my apartment complex, so my apartment complex is harming me. An optional luxury being taken out of your hands doesn't harm you. Being prescribed a known faulty cancer medication would be an example of what you're talking about. Feeding your customers meat you know is spoiled is what you're talking about.
And stop blaming the gamers when you fall flat in your face.
Know your limits. Play to your strengths. Budget realistically.
THQ is gone because they made marketing and budget mistakes, not because of used games or non-optimal DD. it's not Gamestop's fault they made the boneheaded decision to mass produce the friggin' UDraw for the HD twins, nor is it their fault THQ poured way too much money into a game like Homefront that nobody wanted, or made Darksiders II another expensive AAA affair despite the first one only doing kind of okay while expecting the sequel to sell much better than the first one.
My Let's Play Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC2go70QLfwGq-hW4nvUqmog
You are really reaching here. "Harm" doesn't have to be so dramatic. You know damn well what I mean by harm and you're playing a semantics game to dismiss the valid issues I and others are taking with anti-consumer practices.
But you don't care. You've come out and said it. If you had done this hours ago it could have saved us a bunch of time. You don't care about the consumers. I can never accept an argument coming from that position. So we're done. I should have realized this wasn't worth my time the second you decided to start dismissing valid concerns as hissy fits and namecalled. Washing my hands of you right now because all you've managed to do is make me hate the arguments against physical products and used games even more.
My Let's Play Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC2go70QLfwGq-hW4nvUqmog
I mean, there's one poster here suggesting that saying I would be done with console gaming is crazy talk. Nope. If it gets too ugly and I start to feel bad paying $60 a pop to a company that makes me feel bad, then I have no problem finding other fun things to do with my money.
You started out a bit goosy, but now under stress you've veered into the ridiculously insane. Even accepting exaggeration, I must point out that "business ethics" is a thing, though perhaps only in wishful fantasy. And, of course, saying, "I find your terms unacceptable and harmful to my interests, so I will not purchase you product," is just melodramatic whining. Though, blessedly, you are not advocating for anything, you are saying nothing, you are just throwing out ideas, so no one has any reason to take offense or object. Wonderful.
I only wish you had informed me that you would be wasting my time earlier, perhaps in your first post.
And this here is the issue.
You believe that the game being printed on a physical disk somehow makes it completely fundamentally different. Alot of other people just see it as "Steam game on a disk".
I payed for The Orange Box. I own it. I can't loan it to a friend.
Yeah man, PC gamers are so abused. They suffer so terribly but can't even see it. Steam is the rod that beats us back into line.
"My name is Toby, Master Valve, my name is Toby!"
Well, that was pretty racist.
.....
How?
Tell you what, go up to a group of black people and start making master/slave whipping jokes while saying "My name is Toby!" See how they react.
Sure, when you go to a group of people who've escaped from an abusive relationship and see how they feel about characterizing digital distribution as spousal abuse. See how they react.
If the game on the disc doesn't require activation against a server -- even if it requires activation using a code printed on the box, but can perform that activation without being on the internet -- it is fundamentally different. If Steam ceased to exist tomorrow I could (probably) play the games I currently have installed via offline mode. If I ever lose my hard drive or need to upgrade my PC in a fashion that doesn't retain all of my settings and data? They're gone and I can't ever get them back. Any games I don't already have installed, or don't have installed 'enough' for offline mode to work? Also gone. Can never play them again, just because the company I bought them from is no longer in business.
The game on the disc, that doesn't use a remote server for anything? I can play that shit 'til doomsday if I want to. Twenty years from now I won't be able to play a lot of current PC titles anymore because their activation servers will no longer exist, even if I still have the disc. I'll still be able to play Super Nintendo games that are already twenty years old. Shit, I'll still be able to play the exact same games if I happen to have the 360 or PS3 version instead of the PC one.
You don't own the Orange Box. You have a key to a building where the Orange Box is and you can go in any time you feel like, day or night, and play it for as long as you want. But if that building gets torn down? No more Orange Box for you.
Which is fine. I don't mind renting shit. I have a ton of Steam games. Most of the games I play today I doubt I would even want to go back and play again in a few years. But it's silly to pretend that a download-only, internet activation required piece of software is exactly the same thing as a completely self-contained piece of media.
I am looking at that right now.
Uh huh.
Look, you made an incredibly stupid comparison, I used hyperbole to point it out. Get over it, don't make stupid comparisons again.
I'm fine with that though as long as I'm buying their games at the sale prices. I refuse to drop full rrp for a product I don't own.
The last I read, Steam is responding by building a used game auction house through Steam that will work worldwide. And the EU and the U.S. have repeatedly ruled that those TOS aren't worth the digital paper they are written on.
The question about whether software companies have the right to restrict resale for license is also pretty fuzzy right now. The Autodesk case that overturned the right, reversing a lower court ruling upholding the right to resale, is currently working its way toward the Supreme Court. In the EU, the right of resale has more teeth.
I don't really even mind dropping full retail on a digital-only game if I'm excited enough about the game. I've never sold a game to Gamestop or wherever and there are very few games that I have any strong desire to re-play that've been released in recent years. I'd like to be able to loan steam games to a friend, but I'm basically alright with paying $50 or whatever for 10-40 hours of entertainment and then being done with it. It's cheaper than seeing an equivalent number of hours' worth of movies unless I rent them.
I just find it silly to pretend that there's no difference. If digital-only is the way of the future then fine, but I'd almost rather pay to 'rent' the games with a specified renewal period instead of 'buying' them and keeping them until some nebulous point in the future when they just go away.
It's kind of a shame, though, that eventually entire generations of video games will just be gone after the consoles cycle or the companies go bust or whatever. Kids of the PS5 (or whatever) era will never be able to show their great-grandkids what gaming was like 'in their day', before smell-o-vision games, except I guess through the future equivalent of youtube gameplay videos.
Only a small subset of consumers is being "punished", the tilapia tier. Also, as someone who has moved a few times, physical media is dumb, wasteful, and inconvenient. I used to have boxes and boxes of CD/DVD/BluRay, but now I have less than 10. Good fucking riddance.
The "tilapia tier?" Please tell me that's not code for "poor people."
Because, you might not know this, poor people buy a lot of games. With used games and trading, it's actually one of the more cost effective hobbies for people.
Those that rely on the used games and trading in the secondary market are the tilapia tier, not necessarily "poor people". It was a more artful way of saying "bottom feeders endlessly recycling poop".
Deebs isn't SKFM, he isn't lighting his spring wardrobe on fire when summer hits. And there are plenty of people who make decent money who spend 55 on a copy of a game instead of 60 and probably don't even know that the sale they just did is actively fucking over the game maker and may hurt the chance of getting a sequel for that game.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
While the game industry is in trouble, the many deaths of developers isn't really part of it. The developer situation has pretty much always been fucked up. Their contracts with publishers have always been chokeholds (Where they are unlikely to make more money if the product is a success, and the publisher retains the IP rights so that they can't shop around with their success), and developers unable to sustain themselves is a tale of the ages. The big difference is that before the economic woes EA and Activision were more likely to pick up flailing studios and turn them into something sad. There is a whole other thread of discussion there, especially if you throw in that the games industry is probably one of the top five worst industry for workers in the western world. No job security, continual 'crunch,' and if you don't like it, we've got this horde of 22 year olds whose dreamjob you currently hold. Remember EA_Spouse?
The industry is in trouble because the total amount of money spent on games is shrinking (though by exactly how much is hard to tell, since digital data is hard to come by, especially since Steam doesn't publish any numbers). They haven't really adjusted to this situation yet, and keep on making very expensive games with large marketing budgets (These can be up to 30% of a games total cost). Something has got to give, and part of it is the emergence of stylized cheaper games, often for a lot less money, and part of it is the shrinking of the AAA field. The death of THQ was more telling, but the lead balloon that is the uDraw had a lot to do with it (Ultimately they went under with a debt of around 100m and assets that were worth about 70m at auction, where the estimated loss on the uDraw was also 100m). THQ was a decent sized player, but their games were a tier below (mostly in the sense of budget/game) the big three: EA, Activision, Ubisoft. Those three all look fairly healthy, and all have annual games that make them money.
I will also say that there is a difference on backwards compatibility between consoles and PC games. PC games are BC inheritently because there are no generations, but incremental adjustments. There are a few games out there that don't play nice with the 32-64bit transition, and a few that can't recognize modern videocards, but otherwise any game past the DOS era (1996 is the year most games came with a win95 installer) will probably either just work or require minor tweaks.
If Sony or MS would come out and say 'we guarantee right now that all your purchases will keep on working for another generation' then maybe things would be different. But this is not at all guaranteed.
There's one more bit of trickery with XBL already in play: XBL accounts are personal within the household too. This is already in effect if you own a 360 and a GWFL game: If you log into your GWFL game, your 360 will log itself out. You can't watch Netflix while you play Batman:AC on your PC, nor can anyone in your household. Restrictions like this have to be conscious decisions (since they require quite a bit of architecture behind the scenes) and make me wary about the supposed generous actions of console developers in the future. Why will they put work into BC when they could instead port, call it 'TrueHD', and resell the same game? The latter has been there modus operandi for the past decade.
And that's an argument I havent heard since 2006 or so.
Valve has made it clear that if some ridiculous future occurred where Steam had to be shuttered, they would allow all titles to be downloaded and taken into offline mode forever.
If Microsoft or Sony ever decided to get out of this industry that they have invested billions of dollars into, they would do the same thing or else get sued into oblivion.
edit: this is why having your digital library managed by a bigass company that isn't going anywhere (Apple, Microsoft, Sony, Valve, etc) is preferable.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
http://www.evga.com/forums/tm.aspx?m=446772&mpage=1
I mean, you can contact Steam too if you like - this has been their line for years now.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
And while MS and Sony might not be going anywhere in a hurry as companies, there's nothing stopping them from shuttering their video game arms in the event that they turn unprofitable. I'm pretty sure the XBL and PSN terms of service indicate that you have access to your shit so long as you have a paid subscription. If they stop offering new subscriptions, once your shit runs out, oh well. There's not even anything to sue them over at that point. And if someone did come up with a case, the remaining corporate entity probably has the money to squash it but, in the optimistic case that the plaintiff actually came away victorious, you'd be entitled to some small cut of the after-legal-fees settlement and still not have your games (or even any way to buy them again with the payout, since the service no longer exists).
It hasn't happened yet but with the number of companies going under in recent years and the number of developers deciding to roll their own authentication or content delivery systems it's pretty much a matter of time. How long do you think EA would have to think about shutting down Origin if they did the math and came up with it being cheaper to turn off the servers than to pay out a theoretical civil suit over having done it?
And your house could catch fire and all of your physical copies will be lost forever, wheras a digital distribution model will not only protect the games themselves by allowing you to download them again on your new, not burned computer... you also will likely still have your save games.
Or a burglar could come in and steal your shit while you are on vacation.
It is significantly more statistically likely that your house will go up in flames or you get robbed than Sony or Microsoft get out of the gaming business in the next 10-20 years.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
There is nothing you can do to protect yourself from EA, Microsoft, Sony, or Valve being unable to keep their servers going for legal reasons.
I doubt it to be honest. Remakes and re-releases are popular now, it's a relitivly cheap way from publishers to get another game out without having to spend dev hours making one.
I see no reason why 30 years from now I won't be able to download FFXV special re-release edition for my PS7 or whatever.
You are playing to an extreme fringe here now.
the number of people who lock their xboxes and game collections in fireproof safes? Who have multi-terabyte backup solutions at home to handle their game collections, and the necessary hacking to let the game console play said backups?
Versus everyone who uses a digital distribution system gaining the security and benefits of having the right to download at any time, to any device their profile is active on.
Were it not for Gamestop and luddites, this generation could have been awesome from a pricing and an accessibility level.
What's going to be funny is if Valve rolls out with a Steambox, and it becomes known as the easy to use console that routinely puts AAA games for sale at 50-75% off and has an ocean of great indy titles, and never makes it hard to find old games, and the market responds by a big reduction of the marketshare of Sony and Microsoft over a few years.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...