Realistically, I think the discussion is pretty much moot since Daniel James was talking about entertainment products, not applications.
Whatever, you seem to be raging on him a fair amount, but your post is fairly well written and it's pretty apparent you feel this is really important, so whilst you're telling us how wrong you think he is, why not drop him an e-mail with the contents of your post telling him exactly why he's ticked you off so much.
Heck, drop Tycho one too, as an applications developer, it might make for an interesting counter-point to his.
By all means please do send me an email, but you need to remove the pie, my url is djames.org
With respect to my 'tough shit' stance, I was courting controversey. I think it's perfectly reasonable to say 'Pay me for this software you run on your computer', but I think it's foolish to try to turn back the tide of piracy with increasingly unfriendly protective measures. If people are pirating your code I agree that is disrespectful and annoying, but I'm not sure it represents actual 'lost revenue' as I suspect that most such pirates would not pay for it under any circumstances.
Of course if it's a business application their work may pay for it, and indeed, this is the elephant in the room for Autodesk etc. The ubiquitous piracy of 3DS MAX has trained a generation of artists in the tool, who now get their companies (like mine) to buy legit versions. Seems like a win, even if they 'lost revenue' along the way.
Realistically, I think the discussion is pretty much moot since Daniel James was talking about entertainment products, not applications.
Whatever, you seem to be raging on him a fair amount, but your post is fairly well written and it's pretty apparent you feel this is really important, so whilst you're telling us how wrong you think he is, why not drop him an e-mail with the contents of your post telling him exactly why he's ticked you off so much.
Realistically, I think the discussion is pretty much moot since Daniel James was talking about entertainment products, not applications.
Whatever, you seem to be raging on him a fair amount, but your post is fairly well written and it's pretty apparent you feel this is really important, so whilst you're telling us how wrong you think he is, why not drop him an e-mail with the contents of your post telling him exactly why he's ticked you off so much.
Heck, drop Tycho one too, as an applications developer, it might make for an interesting counter-point to his.
By all means please do send me an email, but you need to remove the pie, my url is djames.org
With respect to my 'tough shit' stance, I was courting controversey. I think it's perfectly reasonable to say 'Pay me for this software you run on your computer', but I think it's foolish to try to turn back the tide of piracy with increasingly unfriendly protective measures. If people are pirating your code I agree that is disrespectful and annoying, but I'm not sure it represents actual 'lost revenue' as I suspect that most such pirates would not pay for it under any circumstances.
Of course if it's a business application their work may pay for it, and indeed, this is the elephant in the room for Autodesk etc. The ubiquitous piracy of 3DS MAX has trained a generation of artists in the tool, who now get their companies (like mine) to buy legit versions. Seems like a win, even if they 'lost revenue' along the way.
It's true, in the end people using software and it becoming prevalent causes larger firms to require direct guarantees and support which means they'll need to pay the software makers.
I'm not sure that I buy that whole "pirates aren't going to pay for it anyway" argument. The PSP is a system with substantially more piracy than any of the other systems out at the moment and it also has the worst software to hardware sales rate of any of the systems. Coincidence? I doubt it.
I'm sure that it's true that 1 pirated copy doesn't equal 1 lost sale, but I still think it's a substantial amount of lost sales, both directly (if someone didn't pirate the game, they might buy it) and indirectly (if someone didn't pirate the game, they might have bought a different game instead). Even if it's as low as 10 pirated copies equals 1 lost sale, that's still a substantial amount of lost sales when even second tier games are getting millions of illegal downloads.
I don't think that was the argument. I think it was that given the current ease of piracy that anyone who would "casually" pirate the game would do so anyways since DRM hasn't prevented internet piracy. Arguing that is just pure speculation though.
Rakai on
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I'm not sure that I buy that whole "pirates aren't going to pay for it anyway" argument. The PSP is a system with substantially more piracy than any of the other systems out at the moment and it also has the worst software to hardware sales rate of any of the systems. Coincidence? I doubt it.
You think it's no coincidence that the most expensive and fragile hand held with the lowest battery life and smallest gaming library isn't selling well?
I think people focus on the wrong aspect of the whole piracy thing. How many people have refused to buy a game because of things like starforce and the like? Like it said in the comic the only people who are actually effected by the struggle between publishers and pirates are the people who actually purchase the game. It's pretty ridiculous.
I'm not sure that I buy that whole "pirates aren't going to pay for it anyway" argument. The PSP is a system with substantially more piracy than any of the other systems out at the moment and it also has the worst software to hardware sales rate of any of the systems. Coincidence? I doubt it.
You think it's no coincidence that the most expensive and fragile hand held with the lowest battery life and smallest gaming library isn't selling well?
But it IS selling well. It's the software that's not.
Rakai on
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You should not be able to return a game just because you didn't like it. Some of your other points are valid, but whining because you have to take a chance when you buy a game on if you're gonna like it is silly. It's not the store's responsibility to only sell you games that you're going to like, and the store doesn't deserve to pay the consequences if you buy something you don't end up liking.
Not to mention, a return policy like that would be abused and used as a free rental service.
Second part is valid, first part is not. I can do that with pretty much any other consumer item.
Hell, even FOOD usually has a "Send the leftovers back to the maker if not satisfied" label on it.
I have yet to find a box of food that says they'll send you money if you send them a bag of shit.
No even if the so called food turned out to be a shit sandwich? (MoO3)
If you really want to understand all this stuff, you have to keep the profit motive in mind.
The disappearance of lenient return policies at specialty game retailers (GameStop) is part of the way GameStop makes outrageous money through used game sales. You don't get to return games anymore, but you do get to sell them back a $60 game for $35 dollars. They resell the used game for $55, which profits Gamestop $20 (much better for them than the ~$10 profit they'd make on a new game sale).
The appearance of "limited install" DRM, on the other hand, is really the publisher's attempt to limit used game sales. Publishers don't make any money whatsoever on the secondhand market--all of that profit goes to the retailer who's selling the used game. But if the retailer can't sell the game used, then they have to buy more copies from the publisher, which increases the publisher's return on their investment in the game.
You'll notice that I haven't used the word "piracy" at all.
If you really want to understand all this stuff, you have to keep the profit motive in mind.
The disappearance of lenient return policies at specialty game retailers (GameStop) is part of the way GameStop makes outrageous money through used game sales. You don't get to return games anymore, but you do get to sell them back a $60 game for $35 dollars. They resell the used game for $55, which profits Gamestop $20 (much better for them than the ~$10 profit they'd make on a new game sale).
The appearance of "limited install" DRM, on the other hand, is really the publisher's attempt to limit used game sales. Publishers don't make any money whatsoever on the secondhand market--all of that profit goes to the retailer who's selling the used game. But if the retailer can't sell the game used, then they have to buy more copies from the publisher, which increases the publisher's return on their investment in the game.
You'll notice that I haven't used the word "piracy" at all.
Except Gamestop doesn't sell used PC games and you can reclaim activations
Rakai on
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I'm not sure that I buy that whole "pirates aren't going to pay for it anyway" argument. The PSP is a system with substantially more piracy than any of the other systems out at the moment and it also has the worst software to hardware sales rate of any of the systems. Coincidence? I doubt it.
You think it's no coincidence that the most expensive and fragile hand held with the lowest battery life and smallest gaming library isn't selling well?
But it IS selling well. It's the software that's not.
There are plenty of good reasons for that, too, though. There are maybe a dozen or so "top tier" PSP games, and a sizable chunk of those are ports. My anecdotal experience has been that even those users who have cracked their PSP aren't playing PSP games, bootleg or otherwise. It's just more attractive as a media player, homebrew platform, and emulation enabler than it is as a gaming platform, and that's Sony's fault for not getting enough AAA titles out the doors.
The DS is MUCH, MUCH more vulnerable as far as ease of piracy (buy cartridge, insert SD card full of games, done), but it isn't having nearly the same software sales problems that the PSP is.
I think CD keys came to be around the time when word of mouth wasn't as important. DooM was supposed to be shared with as wide an audience as possible, and made more money that way. Now that any game on the shelf is marketing itself, sharing isn't really that important. If you don't throw the game up on the bulletin boards, it's still going to make money. In a time when even 'big' game developers went unnoticed by most of the world, CD keys weren't necessary to insure a profit.
CD-burners were also extremely expensive. CD-keys seemed to pop up shortly after burners became common place.
yeah but at the time you could still put CD games on a bunch of floppies, and those were super cheap thanks to AOL.
Although most of the time you'd get home and find that one of the floppies that was fine 5 minutes ago is not un-readable and you have to go back to the friend's house and re-copy it... ah ARJ. Where art thow now?
I'm not sure that I buy that whole "pirates aren't going to pay for it anyway" argument. The PSP is a system with substantially more piracy than any of the other systems out at the moment and it also has the worst software to hardware sales rate of any of the systems. Coincidence? I doubt it.
You think it's no coincidence that the most expensive and fragile hand held with the lowest battery life and smallest gaming library isn't selling well?
But it IS selling well. It's the software that's not.
There are plenty of good reasons for that, too, though. There are maybe a dozen or so "top tier" PSP games, and a sizable chunk of those are ports. My anecdotal experience has been that even those users who have cracked their PSP aren't playing PSP games, bootleg or otherwise. It's just more attractive as a media player, homebrew platform, and emulation enabler than it is as a gaming platform, and that's Sony's fault for not getting enough AAA titles out the doors.
The DS is MUCH, MUCH more vulnerable as far as ease of piracy (buy cartridge, insert SD card full of games, done), but it isn't having nearly the same software sales problems that the PSP is.
It's true I've spent more time playing Cave Story then actual psp games.
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Waka LakaRiding the stuffed UnicornIf ya know what I mean.Registered Userregular
edited September 2008
Bohemia Interactive created a pretty nifty system that degrades performance of Operation Flashpoint, also for their Military sim for the army, each copy had a USB dongle that needed to be in otherwise the software won't boot, it was hard coded the computer it was on, it is very very effective though.
If developers did that, expect a price increase on software, because the military had to pay through the teeth to get it.
It's kind of ridiculous though to make every piece of software have to have it's own dongle.
Even more so when we find that software with out drm out the ass sells just as well as stuff that does.
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Waka LakaRiding the stuffed UnicornIf ya know what I mean.Registered Userregular
edited September 2008
Yeah it is pretty rediculous, but hey, Bohemia have made money so they have no problem with it - here is the site for the software that they made with the dongle -
I'm not sure that I buy that whole "pirates aren't going to pay for it anyway" argument. The PSP is a system with substantially more piracy than any of the other systems out at the moment and it also has the worst software to hardware sales rate of any of the systems. Coincidence? I doubt it.
I've known people who bought a PSP specifically because of the piracy scene on it. They really weren't interested in getting the (fairly expensive) system until they found out the scope of piracy taking place and how easy it was to do. Ironically, the piracy became their reason to spend money on the system.
I'm not sure that I buy that whole "pirates aren't going to pay for it anyway" argument. The PSP is a system with substantially more piracy than any of the other systems out at the moment and it also has the worst software to hardware sales rate of any of the systems. Coincidence? I doubt it.
You think it's no coincidence that the most expensive and fragile hand held with the lowest battery life and smallest gaming library isn't selling well?
But it IS selling well. It's the software that's not.
There are plenty of good reasons for that, too, though. There are maybe a dozen or so "top tier" PSP games, and a sizable chunk of those are ports. My anecdotal experience has been that even those users who have cracked their PSP aren't playing PSP games, bootleg or otherwise. It's just more attractive as a media player, homebrew platform, and emulation enabler than it is as a gaming platform, and that's Sony's fault for not getting enough AAA titles out the doors.
The DS is MUCH, MUCH more vulnerable as far as ease of piracy (buy cartridge, insert SD card full of games, done), but it isn't having nearly the same software sales problems that the PSP is.
Right. I should have mentioned that. The people I mentioned in my last post didn't buy a PSP to pirate PSP games, they bought it to pirate classic console games and other homebrew apps. What they wanted was a portable emulator.
Me, I've always tried to put my money where my mouth is by buying things I want to encourage, like classic game collections. Other people scoff at the idea of buying "old" games ... but that's a slightly different topic.
I have nothing against the proprietary model, I'm a capitalist through and through. I do believe that DRM is a waste of money because it always fails. Maybe someone can come up with a quantum random generator that will allow truly unbreakable encryption from which a working DRM could be built. But even if they do the cost to use it in most commercial software would add more then the base cost of the product itself. (Because the first thing someone who developed such an app would do would be to secure it, the second would be to sell it for astronomical sums of money. )
I don't know about IT guys from your side of the picture but I do know, and I'm one of them, from the corporate side, at least with Fortune 500 companies. I can tell you that we actively work to eliminate anything that isn't properly licensed, we have summarily fired personal, and their managers, and in one case that managers Asst-VP, and in many others taken less drastic but still highly effective, as in no one tries it a second time in our shop, measures.
The reason we take it seriously isn't the lawsuit, the judgment, or any of that, honestly those items are usually chump change, but the repercussions, with our clients, investors, and Board, are most definitely not chump change. We sell based on Confidence & Goodwill, the accounting type not the touchy feely type, and there isn't much that we would consciously risk that value for, certainly not over some workstation program that runs what $50k per license? I don't know what your product sells for but 50k is not much for high end per seat / per proc licenses.
The other part of the equation that I find interesting comes from an editorial in Max PC a few months back. The writer maintained that Steam and other such schemes helped bring PC games closer to the security levels of their console counterparts, making the PC a more attractive platform. However a quick survey of titles on both sides show that consoles do not pass one dime of that margin on to the consumer, quite the opposite in fact.
In theory, if a company is losing say 20% of sales to theft and they stop all but 2% of it their margin will increase, if they are not running at a current loss, by roughly 18%, it's never that cut and dried but for example. Again in theory the company would then pass on some portion of that additional profit to the consumer by lowering their price, which would in turn raise their market share generating still more revenue, until the incremental unit sales value is greater then the units profit. ie The company loses money by selling one more unit at that price point, but increasing price does not generate additional profit due to loss of market, this is sometimes called the equilibrium point. The fact that console do not reflect this, and that PC games from Steam, etc, also do not reflect this, tends to indicate some factor other then theft is at work.
I would maintain that it is the quality of the work, the title itself, as well as the company selling it rather then theft. Blizzard can produce pretty much anything and I will buy it at their asking price, EB on the other hand....
In point of fact, assuming that WalMart, the largest retailer in the world bar none, has some clue about what they are doing, then their move to kill their DRM servers for music shows that the bean counters at least see a greater P&L statement at the end of the day by doing so. Now their customers have to burn, yes burn, their DRM music to disk, and then load it back up because, like the Microsoft DRM debacle earlier this year, or they will lose it, which I personally consider another example of the software industry engaging in shoddy business practices to out right theft.
I personally have always refused to buy any music that has any DRM in it, but I am now considering buying my music on line as a per song model makes better economic sense to me, given that I can have it in my player at the gym, my car, and my home audio system, I don't use a PC for, shudder, music. That is I bought it, I own it, and the only way I can lose it is some action on my part.
Now if artists start building records again, as opposed to tracks, that could also change. What is the difference you may ask. Simple, Tales of Topographic Oceans, to Dark Side of the Moon, to Alfred Brendel doing Beethoven's 5th Symphony are records, they archive a gestalt. From what I can see, you can pick anything you like published this year in Pop as examples of mere tracks. But that is a whole other topic. :winky:
I'm fairly sure that this applies only to consoles, there is a law against the resale of PC software I believe. At least there was and other then on Ebay I know of no where you can buy used software.
This not only works it is a fair model, if at some point I don't want to continue I can simply quit buying it. It would also tend to put pressure on thieves as their honest friends are going to be waiting for you to hit your market goal!
But should the first installment cost $50? That would depend on what I got for my money of course. :}
That was the reason behind the change but unit sales are now lower, adjusted for installed base, then they were then, so it would seem that then change did not have the desired result.
Another thing I look for, so sue me, is if a game is cracked, before I buy it. I hate, hate, hate, having my drives loaded up with game disks, and then swapping around. I hated that when all I had was a single 5 1/4" floppy and I still hate it today. On that point things like Steam are superior as I don't have to bother with a crack, much less isolate it in my test space until I'm sure it's actually clean, etc.
WOW, I am truly sorry if my post came across as ticked off at him, much less a flame. I was commenting on the industries' position in general not his solution in particular.
If you really want to understand all this stuff, you have to keep the profit motive in mind.
The disappearance of lenient return policies at specialty game retailers (GameStop) is part of the way GameStop makes outrageous money through used game sales. You don't get to return games anymore, but you do get to sell them back a $60 game for $35 dollars. They resell the used game for $55, which profits Gamestop $20 (much better for them than the ~$10 profit they'd make on a new game sale).
The appearance of "limited install" DRM, on the other hand, is really the publisher's attempt to limit used game sales. Publishers don't make any money whatsoever on the secondhand market--all of that profit goes to the retailer who's selling the used game. But if the retailer can't sell the game used, then they have to buy more copies from the publisher, which increases the publisher's return on their investment in the game.
You'll notice that I haven't used the word "piracy" at all.
Except Gamestop doesn't sell used PC games and you can reclaim activations
I...think that's exactly Ks point. The reason gamestop doesn't sell used PC games anymore is because CD keys end up tied to specific PCs, accounts and email addresses. Yes, you can reclaim activations now but even that system means that the Gamestop clerk has to trust that this gormless idiot whose trying to trade in 10 PC games for credit towards an NGage 2 has actually reclaimed those activation codes. Otherwise you just end up with a bunch of unsellable DVDs.
If you really want to understand all this stuff, you have to keep the profit motive in mind.
The disappearance of lenient return policies at specialty game retailers (GameStop) is part of the way GameStop makes outrageous money through used game sales. You don't get to return games anymore, but you do get to sell them back a $60 game for $35 dollars. They resell the used game for $55, which profits Gamestop $20 (much better for them than the ~$10 profit they'd make on a new game sale).
The appearance of "limited install" DRM, on the other hand, is really the publisher's attempt to limit used game sales. Publishers don't make any money whatsoever on the secondhand market--all of that profit goes to the retailer who's selling the used game. But if the retailer can't sell the game used, then they have to buy more copies from the publisher, which increases the publisher's return on their investment in the game.
You'll notice that I haven't used the word "piracy" at all.
Except Gamestop doesn't sell used PC games and you can reclaim activations
I...think that's exactly Ks point. The reason gamestop doesn't sell used PC games anymore is because CD keys end up tied to specific PCs, accounts and email addresses. Yes, you can reclaim activations now but even that system means that the Gamestop clerk has to trust that this gormless idiot whose trying to trade in 10 PC games for credit towards an NGage 2 has actually reclaimed those activation codes. Otherwise you just end up with a bunch of unsellable DVDs.
My point was that used PC games disappeared from Gamestop long before the install limits appeared. EB stopped selling them when they were bought out by Gamestop as Gamestop doesn't deal in used PC games. CD-keys were the killer as games such as Diablo II (8 or 9 years ago) have multiplayer tied to CD-keys.
Rakai on
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]XBL: Rakayn | PS3: Rakayn | Steam ID
If you really want to understand all this stuff, you have to keep the profit motive in mind.
The disappearance of lenient return policies at specialty game retailers (GameStop) is part of the way GameStop makes outrageous money through used game sales. You don't get to return games anymore, but you do get to sell them back a $60 game for $35 dollars. They resell the used game for $55, which profits Gamestop $20 (much better for them than the ~$10 profit they'd make on a new game sale).
The appearance of "limited install" DRM, on the other hand, is really the publisher's attempt to limit used game sales. Publishers don't make any money whatsoever on the secondhand market--all of that profit goes to the retailer who's selling the used game. But if the retailer can't sell the game used, then they have to buy more copies from the publisher, which increases the publisher's return on their investment in the game.
You'll notice that I haven't used the word "piracy" at all.
Except Gamestop doesn't sell used PC games and you can reclaim activations
I...think that's exactly Ks point. The reason gamestop doesn't sell used PC games anymore is because CD keys end up tied to specific PCs, accounts and email addresses. Yes, you can reclaim activations now but even that system means that the Gamestop clerk has to trust that this gormless idiot whose trying to trade in 10 PC games for credit towards an NGage 2 has actually reclaimed those activation codes. Otherwise you just end up with a bunch of unsellable DVDs.
I'm wondering if we are talking about apples and oranges. Software can not be rented, under the 1990 Software Rental Act
Resale is a bit murkier as there is a battle based on US Copyright law's First Sale Doctrine, for a brief on the posistion I personally support here is a report from the Rutgers Law Review This position is not the one most often upheld by the courts, though the Autodesk case may show some light at the end of that tunnel.
Basically, the software companies will continue to fight tooth and nail against First Sale and Fair Use regardless, it would seem, of their own economic interest. Once an industry creates a "tenet of faith" around some concept they fall victim to group think and calcify that position against all reason.
The only alternative at this point is through the courts, but in the US at least, the courts are dominated by the litigant with the deepest pockets rather then the merits of a case. I belive this must change if we are to ever return to a consumer driven model of capitalism, as opposed to the 1800's "Industrialist" model, better know as the "Robber Barons" that the current system is driving us toward. But that to is another topic.
what's annoyed me about games for a while is the difficulty of getting some to run on LAN. I was liking the spawn copy idea that some companies were trying back in the late 90s (blizzard did this for starcraft original and war2 battle.net and I believe SSI for Dark Colony), cause you could easily get LAN games going without having the cd constantly in the drive or all unique keys. I really love games that let you run the game without the disc and can hop in LAN games with no cd-key verification (some games as long as you have a internet connection, checks for authorization, even on LAN! Fucking Painkiller). I mean sure you could use no-cd cracks and/or images (some games need an image to run, like Jedi Knight 2, no cd crack fucks the multiplayer part), but make it easier to play LAN.
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With respect to my 'tough shit' stance, I was courting controversey. I think it's perfectly reasonable to say 'Pay me for this software you run on your computer', but I think it's foolish to try to turn back the tide of piracy with increasingly unfriendly protective measures. If people are pirating your code I agree that is disrespectful and annoying, but I'm not sure it represents actual 'lost revenue' as I suspect that most such pirates would not pay for it under any circumstances.
Of course if it's a business application their work may pay for it, and indeed, this is the elephant in the room for Autodesk etc. The ubiquitous piracy of 3DS MAX has trained a generation of artists in the tool, who now get their companies (like mine) to buy legit versions. Seems like a win, even if they 'lost revenue' along the way.
Sorry about that. I need to learn to pay more attention.
EDIT: Also, thanks for taking the time to stop by and say something on the post.
It's true, in the end people using software and it becoming prevalent causes larger firms to require direct guarantees and support which means they'll need to pay the software makers.
I'm sure that it's true that 1 pirated copy doesn't equal 1 lost sale, but I still think it's a substantial amount of lost sales, both directly (if someone didn't pirate the game, they might buy it) and indirectly (if someone didn't pirate the game, they might have bought a different game instead). Even if it's as low as 10 pirated copies equals 1 lost sale, that's still a substantial amount of lost sales when even second tier games are getting millions of illegal downloads.
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You think it's no coincidence that the most expensive and fragile hand held with the lowest battery life and smallest gaming library isn't selling well?
I think people focus on the wrong aspect of the whole piracy thing. How many people have refused to buy a game because of things like starforce and the like? Like it said in the comic the only people who are actually effected by the struggle between publishers and pirates are the people who actually purchase the game. It's pretty ridiculous.
I never asked for this!
But it IS selling well. It's the software that's not.
No even if the so called food turned out to be a shit sandwich? (MoO3)
The disappearance of lenient return policies at specialty game retailers (GameStop) is part of the way GameStop makes outrageous money through used game sales. You don't get to return games anymore, but you do get to sell them back a $60 game for $35 dollars. They resell the used game for $55, which profits Gamestop $20 (much better for them than the ~$10 profit they'd make on a new game sale).
The appearance of "limited install" DRM, on the other hand, is really the publisher's attempt to limit used game sales. Publishers don't make any money whatsoever on the secondhand market--all of that profit goes to the retailer who's selling the used game. But if the retailer can't sell the game used, then they have to buy more copies from the publisher, which increases the publisher's return on their investment in the game.
You'll notice that I haven't used the word "piracy" at all.
Except Gamestop doesn't sell used PC games and you can reclaim activations
There are plenty of good reasons for that, too, though. There are maybe a dozen or so "top tier" PSP games, and a sizable chunk of those are ports. My anecdotal experience has been that even those users who have cracked their PSP aren't playing PSP games, bootleg or otherwise. It's just more attractive as a media player, homebrew platform, and emulation enabler than it is as a gaming platform, and that's Sony's fault for not getting enough AAA titles out the doors.
The DS is MUCH, MUCH more vulnerable as far as ease of piracy (buy cartridge, insert SD card full of games, done), but it isn't having nearly the same software sales problems that the PSP is.
yeah but at the time you could still put CD games on a bunch of floppies, and those were super cheap thanks to AOL.
Although most of the time you'd get home and find that one of the floppies that was fine 5 minutes ago is not un-readable and you have to go back to the friend's house and re-copy it... ah ARJ. Where art thow now?
It's true I've spent more time playing Cave Story then actual psp games.
I never asked for this!
If developers did that, expect a price increase on software, because the military had to pay through the teeth to get it.
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Even more so when we find that software with out drm out the ass sells just as well as stuff that does.
I never asked for this!
http://www.virtualbattlespace.com/
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I've known people who bought a PSP specifically because of the piracy scene on it. They really weren't interested in getting the (fairly expensive) system until they found out the scope of piracy taking place and how easy it was to do. Ironically, the piracy became their reason to spend money on the system.
Right. I should have mentioned that. The people I mentioned in my last post didn't buy a PSP to pirate PSP games, they bought it to pirate classic console games and other homebrew apps. What they wanted was a portable emulator.
Me, I've always tried to put my money where my mouth is by buying things I want to encourage, like classic game collections. Other people scoff at the idea of buying "old" games ... but that's a slightly different topic.
I don't know about IT guys from your side of the picture but I do know, and I'm one of them, from the corporate side, at least with Fortune 500 companies. I can tell you that we actively work to eliminate anything that isn't properly licensed, we have summarily fired personal, and their managers, and in one case that managers Asst-VP, and in many others taken less drastic but still highly effective, as in no one tries it a second time in our shop, measures.
The reason we take it seriously isn't the lawsuit, the judgment, or any of that, honestly those items are usually chump change, but the repercussions, with our clients, investors, and Board, are most definitely not chump change. We sell based on Confidence & Goodwill, the accounting type not the touchy feely type, and there isn't much that we would consciously risk that value for, certainly not over some workstation program that runs what $50k per license? I don't know what your product sells for but 50k is not much for high end per seat / per proc licenses.
The other part of the equation that I find interesting comes from an editorial in Max PC a few months back. The writer maintained that Steam and other such schemes helped bring PC games closer to the security levels of their console counterparts, making the PC a more attractive platform. However a quick survey of titles on both sides show that consoles do not pass one dime of that margin on to the consumer, quite the opposite in fact.
In theory, if a company is losing say 20% of sales to theft and they stop all but 2% of it their margin will increase, if they are not running at a current loss, by roughly 18%, it's never that cut and dried but for example. Again in theory the company would then pass on some portion of that additional profit to the consumer by lowering their price, which would in turn raise their market share generating still more revenue, until the incremental unit sales value is greater then the units profit. ie The company loses money by selling one more unit at that price point, but increasing price does not generate additional profit due to loss of market, this is sometimes called the equilibrium point. The fact that console do not reflect this, and that PC games from Steam, etc, also do not reflect this, tends to indicate some factor other then theft is at work.
I would maintain that it is the quality of the work, the title itself, as well as the company selling it rather then theft. Blizzard can produce pretty much anything and I will buy it at their asking price, EB on the other hand....
In point of fact, assuming that WalMart, the largest retailer in the world bar none, has some clue about what they are doing, then their move to kill their DRM servers for music shows that the bean counters at least see a greater P&L statement at the end of the day by doing so. Now their customers have to burn, yes burn, their DRM music to disk, and then load it back up because, like the Microsoft DRM debacle earlier this year, or they will lose it, which I personally consider another example of the software industry engaging in shoddy business practices to out right theft.
I personally have always refused to buy any music that has any DRM in it, but I am now considering buying my music on line as a per song model makes better economic sense to me, given that I can have it in my player at the gym, my car, and my home audio system, I don't use a PC for, shudder, music. That is I bought it, I own it, and the only way I can lose it is some action on my part.
Now if artists start building records again, as opposed to tracks, that could also change. What is the difference you may ask. Simple, Tales of Topographic Oceans, to Dark Side of the Moon, to Alfred Brendel doing Beethoven's 5th Symphony are records, they archive a gestalt. From what I can see, you can pick anything you like published this year in Pop as examples of mere tracks. But that is a whole other topic. :winky:
But should the first installment cost $50? That would depend on what I got for my money of course. :}
Another thing I look for, so sue me, is if a game is cracked, before I buy it. I hate, hate, hate, having my drives loaded up with game disks, and then swapping around. I hated that when all I had was a single 5 1/4" floppy and I still hate it today. On that point things like Steam are superior as I don't have to bother with a crack, much less isolate it in my test space until I'm sure it's actually clean, etc.
My apologizes to any one who took it other wise.
Just sayin', dude. Following your last few posts was a bit awkward.
I...think that's exactly Ks point. The reason gamestop doesn't sell used PC games anymore is because CD keys end up tied to specific PCs, accounts and email addresses. Yes, you can reclaim activations now but even that system means that the Gamestop clerk has to trust that this gormless idiot whose trying to trade in 10 PC games for credit towards an NGage 2 has actually reclaimed those activation codes. Otherwise you just end up with a bunch of unsellable DVDs.
Oopps Sorry
My point was that used PC games disappeared from Gamestop long before the install limits appeared. EB stopped selling them when they were bought out by Gamestop as Gamestop doesn't deal in used PC games. CD-keys were the killer as games such as Diablo II (8 or 9 years ago) have multiplayer tied to CD-keys.
I'm wondering if we are talking about apples and oranges. Software can not be rented, under the 1990 Software Rental Act
Resale is a bit murkier as there is a battle based on US Copyright law's First Sale Doctrine, for a brief on the posistion I personally support here is a report from the Rutgers Law Review This position is not the one most often upheld by the courts, though the Autodesk case may show some light at the end of that tunnel.
Basically, the software companies will continue to fight tooth and nail against First Sale and Fair Use regardless, it would seem, of their own economic interest. Once an industry creates a "tenet of faith" around some concept they fall victim to group think and calcify that position against all reason.
The only alternative at this point is through the courts, but in the US at least, the courts are dominated by the litigant with the deepest pockets rather then the merits of a case. I belive this must change if we are to ever return to a consumer driven model of capitalism, as opposed to the 1800's "Industrialist" model, better know as the "Robber Barons" that the current system is driving us toward. But that to is another topic.