DRM Implications *spin*
- Thread starter -tkf-
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@Davros
No really you are reading it all wrong.
What I mean is that as long as the demand is low the prices will stay high.
The demand for DD is low compered to the number of players.
Steam serves 50 million PC at today but really how many PC players are there?
And with over 200 million of consoles in the world how many players/customers use DD?
No I don't see a sufficient demand for DD across consoles and PC to justify a reduction in prices...yet.
And not getting the cut is exactly the problem for developer.
For us customers the problem is that prices are too high.
So basically jut live and let die: very profound.
I prefer to live and help live.
On PC the demand is stronger but non on consoles.
The demand must be strong everywhere not just on PC.
Only when the demand for DD will surpass physical delivery on PC & consoles prices will go down.
Obviously if prices won't go down then people will progressively abandon gaming and the industry will die.
Which is what it is happening now because software and hardware sales are down year by year.
No really you are reading it all wrong.
What I mean is that as long as the demand is low the prices will stay high.
The demand for DD is low compered to the number of players.
Steam serves 50 million PC at today but really how many PC players are there?
And with over 200 million of consoles in the world how many players/customers use DD?
No I don't see a sufficient demand for DD across consoles and PC to justify a reduction in prices...yet.
And not getting the cut is exactly the problem for developer.
For us customers the problem is that prices are too high.
So basically jut live and let die: very profound.
I prefer to live and help live.
On PC the demand is stronger but non on consoles.
The demand must be strong everywhere not just on PC.
Only when the demand for DD will surpass physical delivery on PC & consoles prices will go down.
Obviously if prices won't go down then people will progressively abandon gaming and the industry will die.
Which is what it is happening now because software and hardware sales are down year by year.
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Yes, very profound, if they can't live without sucking the blood out of me, they can all go away. I have been throwing money at games longer than you have lived (wild guess here) and i have gotten the following in return: Crappy support, even worse copy protection and sequels upon sequels. And during all this , and i mean seriously since the first game could be bought, i have heard nothing but complaining and bitching from the same people that i give my money that they want more MORE.
I am getting to the point where i think you are being ignorant on purpose, or because you just don't have an answer. So lets put you on the spot here.
Why can't we have a used market supported by the industry, the cut you are so worried about goes directly back.
Just how many rights are you prepared to give up.
How many can watch a movie i buy, lets get some real estimates. It's the exact same thing that you are preaching here, if i let anyone besides me watch the movie someone somewhere is losing a "cut".
That is not how economics work. The price for games is set where the number of sold copies aligns with what people will pay. There is no other way to calculate that.
And just to prove my point, Blizzard made gazillions on WoW, and game that could not be copied or sold used. The amount of money they earned never ever came back to the game in the same amounts.
And who's being objective in this argument? The guys selling stuff trying to get as much money as possible, or those wanting to get as much as possible for as little as possible? Both sides are arguing exclusively from their own self-interest. I'm not seeing anyone in this argument, or the orignal thread, who was tackling it as an exercise in impartial reasoning (although I suppose those consumers advocating resale revenues for publishers were at least not acting out of self-interest).
There are all sorts of high-level arguments that can be considered. One obvious one is the reliance on predicate founded on historical circumstance. Okay, books were freely shared and resold. Does that make it right though, or just an unfair limitation of the technology of the time? If the very first books were DRM'd eBooks, and no-one had prior experience of sharing a story without paying directly the story-teller, would public perception be different? Is the fundamental issue with the economic system, and the fact some people are paid for the hours of work they do (which included the original book writers, setting the precedent for books as objects that were owned outright), and others are paid for people buying a reproduction?
There's way more that can be argued here than the simple "used cars are sold", "used cars don't deteriorate", "books have been leant for centuries" arguments that this thread and the other have
recycled a zillion times already. But those arguments are also way bigger than this forum.
That is exactly what I suggest yesterday.
I said:
"The only solution I see is to give for every used book/game/DVD sold a percentage to the owner of the content/IP/copyright.
This way the income obtained from re-selling used games/books/DVD will be divided between all parts/beneficiaries: the customers, the retailer (the intermediary), and the owner of the the IP/content/copyright which for video game is usually game the developer and/or the publisher.
We will thus keep our right to re-sell games but at the same time we do not deny a dev/publisher what is rightfully due to him."
I suggested that if they can't defeat used marketer then they should ally with it with mutual benefit.
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We can't just pretend games are an island and we should only look at that island. And even if we did somehow that island has grown bigger and bigger and billions are being spend on games island. So it's fair game to point at other industries that live and prosper with 2nd hand markets, even without taking a cut.
The question that is being raised with the suggested DRM is our basic right to buy something and used as we want. I am not suggesting that we should be able to profit, for example by renting out our game. I am not even worried that i will have a problem selling my own games, i haven't resold a single game.
But i am worried that i can buy a game and not being able to play at some point in time.
I am worried that i wont be able to buy a game when it's out of "online activations" or the servers are closed.
I am worried that i wont be able to let my son play my games (like he does now).
Am i prepared to pay for these basic rights with a "cheaper game now" scheme?
If we take the Hard Raid Trophy statistics based example for face value, the games would be 33% cheaper. Is that really enough to give up everything else? At least gimme a choice, release games that can be played without activation a year after the original release at the original price and i will stop bickering
Sorry still dont see the point your trying to make
And yes I do understand economies of scale (if thats your point) but it doesn't apply to dd the cost of production does not decrease with volume. In the digital world games have practically zero duplication cost.
In the case of online sales, the reason they are usually priced the same as retail is that the bulk of sales are still through retail and publishers don't want to have the larger brick and mortar stores refuse to take product because they are undercutting them online.
Having said that I wouldn't expect an increase in online sales or a reduction in the second hand market to reduce the cost of games. Publishers will charge what they think the market will bear.
What you might see is some price experimentation, since it's relatively easy to measure the impact of price on game sales when the bulk of your sales are online.
Having said that I wouldn't expect an increase in online sales or a reduction in the second hand market to reduce the cost of games. Publishers will charge what they think the market will bear.
What you might see is some price experimentation, since it's relatively easy to measure the impact of price on game sales when the bulk of your sales are online.
But pal customer's rights exist exactly to prevent that from happening.
Laws exist to protect us...and if the laws are not yet there to protect us then the legislators will made them, on popular demand I might add.
Your concerns are legit but solution to those problems exist.
Oh, sorry.
I hope the folowing will help my case, if not then I am a lost cause and you can just forget I exist: deal?
Now what we know is that is that at today only a certain percentage of players/customers use DD.
We also know that the majority of players/customers use physical delivery, I can't give you an exact percentage sorry, ergo the biggest demand is physical delivery and not in DD. (the fact that physical delivery is still "bigger" than DD this is also the only reason why PS4 and Durango are not DD only)
Now why the demand for DD is lower?
Basically for one reason: infrastructures.
Only a small percentage of players has access to an intent connection suited for DD.
So we didn't see a reduction in prices for DD (despite the production/shipment cost being lower) because the percentage of players that use DD is still not high enough comped to the percentage that use physical delivery; and we won't see a reduction in prices until a sufficient percentage of players will use DD.
With DD companies are not in the condition to "ask less from many" and so simply "ask more from few"; it's bad for us costumers but is the only hing they can do IF they want to survive.
This said with better infrastructures more players/customers will be able to use DD, the demand will increase and then prices could finally be lowered: finally companies would be able to ask less from many.
Now I know that lowing prices might seems an utopia, a dream, but lowering prices can be used to attract customers and that means more profit.
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Customers have no rights Have you read an EULA ?
And if legislators create a law publishers will include a clause saying it doesn't apply
Crysis 3 EULA
And you keep saying increased digital sales will create reduced prices, but you never say why
passing on reduced costs to a customer requires an industry that has a sense of fairness.
There are two discrete arguments. One is the ethics of reselling content and the nature of IP. The other if the business of reselling content within the current culture. The latter's fair game, and making comparisons between what the games industry is doing and what people are used to, or what other industries do, is fair game. But people do need to make the distinction.
'Rights' is effectively an ethics question. Intrinsic rights are hard to prove philosophically, let alone rights tied to a particular culture, and the right to 'own' is a deep debate. The only rights that can really be discussed here are consumer rights as afforded by the economic culture of the free market and whatever regulations governments impose on that free market. I just want to make sure that the discussion doesn't keep veering off, but there is a valid concern and debate about what companies should and could do or not, and how that'd affect consumers. I think we just have to shy away from calling it right or wrong though, and just view it as good business or bad business (and of course, inject opinion and whether people are happy or not).
I agree, I think that's a definite concern, although in some ways it's no different to having hardware that breaks over time. Nothing lasts for ever (except digital information!
). We've seen games with online requirements be taken offline, and that's hard cheese on the consumers. On the flip side, I'm seeing the opportunity in technology to address some shortcomings of the system. If we consider everyone who has an experience should reimburse those who created that experience, as we'd have to if the only experiences we had were physical, then the addition of second-hand revenues to the developers has to be seen as a good thing IMO. Even if one doesn't accept that view of creative value, it's definitely positive for the industry to inject more finance to prevent it from stagnating. Otherwise it runs the risk of collapsing into a lowest-common-denominator serving manufacturing industry chasing easy dollars from the masses. We've seen it happen in the console space before, and I'm seeing the same in the mobile space too with the same tired mechanics because games can make money from it.
That's a very idealistic view, but one not supported historically. Plenty of laws are passed to support the positions of big corporations or dodgy politicians, etc. Plenty of laws that don't have the apporval of the majority are still passed within democracies. The effectiveness of the legal system is a whole, huge RSPCA debate! Suffice to say the law can be trusted 100% to give consumers a fair deal, espiecally depending on where in the world you live. The EU does have a good consumer protection standard though.
I don't know about the US, but in the EU (certainly the UK) you cannot sign away your statutory rights. That clause has zero weight in a UK court. If the EU law decides a player can resell content, no EULA will supersede it. The current DRM situation is going to get thrashed out in the EU courts. The publishers will try and squeeze every penny from consumers, and the EU courts will generally resist them. Developments like the Apple patent points to a well regulated future IMO where digital content is licensed in far more complex ways, and where trades will see returns to the creator. Which IMO is a good thing, as long as prices are kept low enough (very questionable!). Anyone with an eBook who'd read a book for free must be comfortable paying 25-50p to rent it with a cutting going to the author. Personally I think that's the fairest solution, as long as revenues are fairly split. I have made use of second hand sells this gen on a couple of titles, and have capitalised on selling on games I didn't like to get a return. I'd much rather have had a decent cut go the developers than nothing at all, but at the same time I don't want to buy a £40 turkey and be stuck with it. Maybe the ideal solution is a subscription fee and I'm free to play whatever game. That way I wouldn't lose anything buying a bad game and wouldn't care about selling them on. TBH I'm very open to developments as long as they work.
I have rights as customer...unless of course I decide to renounce them.
And even there are rights I can't renounce no matter what EULA I sign.
But that is obvious: if you have lower price you have a better offer and thus customers more likely will choose you.
I the PS Store stars selling games for £30 then why should I buy games at £39,99 from Amazon UK?
History doesn't have to repeat itself you know.
An if ti does then see you on the other side pal...the side where I don't game anymore.
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I agree, I think that's a definite concern, although in some ways it's no different to having hardware that breaks over time. Nothing lasts for ever (except digital information!
Sorry for the rerun, but the last time we had this brought up (DD) my point was that with a Disc in my hand, i had the actual content needed to either be played back so i could watch the movie, listen to the music or play my game. It's true i would need the hardware, but as time has proven that is not the biggest issue compared to DRM schemes that require online activation. There will NES systems able to play Cartridges when Simcity 5 is offline (hahaha i made a funny one because it's not online now and it's supposed to be
.Nothing last forever, but some things last longer, and pretty much everything will outlive EA's online servers for any given game.
Again, idealistic. Through all human history, there have been those standing up for the common man versus those out for their own personal gain (including people shifting from one position to the other), in all government types and on all scales of human communities. There's no reason to think that those deciding the fate of DRM and end user licensing laws will be altruistic and can be trusted 100% to favour the consumer. Not so much a case of history repeating itself (which it does with alarming consistency) as humans being what they are. The signing of the DMLC act is a good example of consumers getting the short stick, especially in the UK where it wasn't properly debated and got through as a side issue - the political system completely failed here to give it proper consideration, as political systems are liable to do. We might have quite a few iterations of laws before we get something that works, and there might be a lot of business-friendly laws along the way, especially in nations where business has a political influence through finance and lobbying.
and you can have a better offer if games shops exist (the shops can have a better offer than digital but its impossible for digital to have a better offer than shops)
It isnt obvious! digital can have a lower price now, and it doesnt (everything youve said applies equally to digital/retail and digital only)
You are saying a digital platform eg: steam cant undercut origin because there are games shops on the high street
and only when retail goes away will one digital distributer be able to offer lower prices than another untill then they must have the exact same price...
Sure but I am the king of fools: I still believe in generosity and altruism.
Now if DRM and blocking-used games will be implemented and become come the norm then it will be because the law will allow it: all will be done be in compliance of the law, probably exploiting the law, but not against the law.
Will things go well for customers?
Well if DRM, blocking used games and DD won't be done done with customers in mind, if it won't be customers friendly, then I expect everyone to loose.
Customers/palyers will leave gaming dissatisfied and companies would at all effect have killed their own market resulting in a colossal suicide.
No sane business man wants that, but hey maybe they are all insane.
Of course this is not a totally realistic point of view, it's an optimistic point of view and it's based on the foolish idea that customers are informed and intelligent and that will not blindly accept everything.
But history tell us that stupidity and ignorance are the norm and that masses can be easily manipulated so and even if DRM & co will be unfair many will still take them no question asked.
-I could have simply said that: It is not nor it cannot come to good...but I just thought that it was not nice of me to bring such a grim point of view here; on a forum I try to be as positive as I can.
The desire to be more competitive influence prices as well as supply and demand.
Retailers wisely choose to have lower prices than DD and this helps them prosper: helps them to be the best offer/choice.
When DD will be accessible by more customers and have fairer prices then physical delivery and retailers will not be the best offer/choice anymore.
This is why Gamestop and Amazon have their DD services: because they know that sooner or alter physical copies will disappear BUT then they will be ready.
They are preparing to be competitive even against DD.
What I mean that that Steam & Co DON'T undercut prices because the ideal conditions for that are not in place.
They could cut prices already to attract customers but don't do it because clearly from their point of view is not a sensible move.
Now (believe me or not) I spoke with a guy that is in the industry and basically what he told me is that no publisher wants to lower the prices for DD copies as log as DD is this "unpopular".
He told me that his company has no interest in lowering the prices of DD copies on the PSN or on XBL because it would make them loose money.
Discounts and price reduction over time are allowed but still in a ungenerous way.
I don't know about MS but Sony has a good series of discounts and price reduction on the PS Store, especially if you are a PS+ user, but still most of the times I can find cheaper new copies form my retailer than on the PS Store.
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The best thing about this thread is Simcity 5 launching in parallel and showing what is awaiting for us , waiting in line for 20 minutes to play a single player game, features removed etc etc. I am proud i didn't buy this game. To bad that EA and "Maxis" isn't going to go bankrupt over a game like this.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2013/03/11/simcity-is-inherently-broken/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2013/03/11/simcity-is-inherently-broken/
Won't do the Emeryville office much good.
The reason Maxis was wound up as a separate entity and largely relocated to Redwood Shores was as much the failure of TSO as anything. What was the Spore team at the time was the only thing moved to Emeryville.
(((interference)))
Veteran
Is Cjall really so naive as to assume corporations like EA and Activision have their customers best interests in mind? As reality seems to indicate that their focus is squarely their bottom line and share prices - and fat bonuses for their executives.
They'll only have their customers best interests in mind as long as they don't conflict with the other two overriding concerns.
They'll only have their customers best interests in mind as long as they don't conflict with the other two overriding concerns.
