Sony joins EA and Ubisoft in considering limitations on used games
- Thread starter patsu
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upnorthsox
Veteran
What about when I buy their product first hand and can't let a friend borrow it and play online? Without giving him my account that is, and allowing him to log on as me. Which, IIRC, would be a violation of the platform holder's TOS.
Let me put it another way, you go to a restraunt and order food. Now can you take that plate of food and go outside and sell it? IMO you can. Can you go to the table next to you and sell it? IMO no you can't, the restraunt is providing you an extended service of a place to eat and enjoy your meal and within those confines they have rights to say what can and cannot be done. Finally, can you order food and then demand that your friend or anyone else be served for free because you have ordered food? No, no, hell no.
corduroygt
Banned
I would actually LOVE that idea...90% of my games would only cost $40 or less that way
Gradthrawn
Veteran
No, but I can let my friend leech and eat some of my food.
(your analogy is pretty horrible, by the way ). Gamestop's pawn shop business model doesn't interferes with me, a customer who only buys new games, and doesn't even trade them in. This proposed model by EA and SCE does.
Its part and parcel with buying a retail packaged product for me. The ability to share it. I'm glad devs/pubs are searching for ways to monetize the second hand market. But don't punish the wrong customer's in doing so.
So what you're saying is that all I own is the piece of plastic the data is printed on? As far as I'm concerned, I own a copy of that game that I can do what I please with, and right now that includes the multi-player. If they want to say that the multi-player privilege is non transferrable, then it should be made clear on the packaging. The companies are within their right to do that, but I think the value of the product changes.
I wouldn't consider the multi-player portion of Call of Duty to be an extended service. It's the core of the game. 90% of the people wouldn't buy it if it weren't for the multiplayer component.
Is buying a game essentially buying a service, like buying a parking pass? There's probably some legal argument that would give me the answer, but I don't know what it is in my particular area.
upnorthsox
Veteran
No, but I can let my friend leech and eat some of my food.
Gamestop's pawn shop business model doesn't interferes with me, a customer who only buys new games, and doesn't even trade them in. This proposed model by EA and SCE does.
Its part and parcel with buying a retail packaged product for me. The ability to share it. I'm glad devs/pubs are searching for ways to monetize the second hand market. But don't punish the wrong customer's in doing so.
As is the topic.
upnorthsox
Veteran
Now you're getting into what is value which is another topic and one that's purely subjective.
I've been trying to keep purely to the topic of online play, if you read my lame atempt at an analogy you'll see I agree that what you buy and posess is yours and can be sold but your entitlements end there, and with a son who's surprisingly reached the age of 12, I've become sensitive to IMO an unwarranted sense of entitlement.
Fact that Best Buy and Target are getting into trading games but not CDs or DVDs show that games are priced high enough to make the secondary market lucrative.
Obviously most games are not big money makers. But those publishers who are upset at used game sales only have to look at themselves to blame. If games were sold at $30, it would decimate the used games market.
Obviously most games are not big money makers. But those publishers who are upset at used game sales only have to look at themselves to blame. If games were sold at $30, it would decimate the used games market.
Why ? I'm sure people will complain that they aren't $20
As soon as console makers can switch to dd only they will do it and gamers will just go with the flow because they can't do anything , just like with movie ticketsgoig up.
In my case, I only have X amount of dollars to spend. I usually only buy a few high quality games brand new and when I do I usually pre-order them ahead of time so I can pay for them installments(like layaway). That's the biggest reason I use GameStop, the layaway plan. I'll continue to buy those 1 or 2 high quality games a year via that method regardless of whether they charge for online or not.
However.....
There's a still lots of other games I still want to buy, but I don't consider them for purchasing them new since they're are not worth it to me. Those titles I'll buy when they finally get to the price I think they are worth and that I can afford. Most of the time I buy them used because I'm not willing to wait a year or so for the new versions to drop in price. Adding the online tax to a game will have good & bad results for me. For those titles where I don't care about multiplayer I will most likely be able to get them much cheaper, much earlier. However, for those titles where I do care about multiplayer I now have to think about an added cost I wasn't planning on. It will get me to start comparing the new cost versus the used cost. More than likely I'll just give up on used multiplayer games altogether because by the time it's cheap enough for me to buy, the online community has already gone onto something else.
If you look at it that way, I'll probably be buying more used single player games than before and less multiplayer games too. Which basically means the only multiplayer games I'll be playing are the titles that I pre-ordered. And those titles usually have both high quality single & multiplayer modes. In the end it might have the intended effect for the publishers, cutting down on used game sales on titles where they still incur support costs after the sale. Unfortunately, I think it will have the effect of less sales too. There's no wonder why GameStop wants to sell DLC in their stores. They're about to start feeling the hurt. Hopefully they're getting some good margins on it.
Tommy McClain
However.....
There's a still lots of other games I still want to buy, but I don't consider them for purchasing them new since they're are not worth it to me. Those titles I'll buy when they finally get to the price I think they are worth and that I can afford. Most of the time I buy them used because I'm not willing to wait a year or so for the new versions to drop in price. Adding the online tax to a game will have good & bad results for me. For those titles where I don't care about multiplayer I will most likely be able to get them much cheaper, much earlier. However, for those titles where I do care about multiplayer I now have to think about an added cost I wasn't planning on. It will get me to start comparing the new cost versus the used cost. More than likely I'll just give up on used multiplayer games altogether because by the time it's cheap enough for me to buy, the online community has already gone onto something else.
If you look at it that way, I'll probably be buying more used single player games than before and less multiplayer games too. Which basically means the only multiplayer games I'll be playing are the titles that I pre-ordered. And those titles usually have both high quality single & multiplayer modes. In the end it might have the intended effect for the publishers, cutting down on used game sales on titles where they still incur support costs after the sale. Unfortunately, I think it will have the effect of less sales too. There's no wonder why GameStop wants to sell DLC in their stores. They're about to start feeling the hurt. Hopefully they're getting some good margins on it.
Tommy McClain
upnorthsox
Veteran
Then again, if they kill off the used market with DD they won't feel the need to tack on MP to everything and eliminate those support costs too. More SP and less MP might be better, for some of us.
So because I think I should be able to sell and trade my games like I would any other product I purchase, I have an unwarranted sense of entitlement?
From the very beginning, my argument has been based on devaluing the product and selling it at the same price. I think what they're doing is going to hurt the industry. It's a short-sighted cash-grab, complaining about a market practice that has existed from day one. The used market is not something that sprung up like Napster and caused a huge shift in the industry.
No, but expensive to run, perpetual online gameplay modes are pretty new, and if we're going to agree that people should be free to sell and buy used games, developers and publishers are also free to exclude people who are not their paying customers from their online services. If Gamestop wants to set up a parallel online gaming infrastructure to support the games they sell used, maybe they should look in to that. Otherwise prices will adjust to reflect the fact that online gameplay is not included with used copies. Whether or not someone believes the online play is an integral part of the product is really immaterial. They can make their own value judgement about what the used copy is worth to them, knowing full well online won't work unless they pay a fee for the service directly to the publisher/developer. If you believe that the publisher/developer is obligated to support online services for players who have not even given them a cent, that is a sense of entitlement.
I disagree. You wouldn't sell games like any other product you purchase because everything else begins to break down over time. Cars , books , tvs all suffer damage and wear while used and you can't recoup as much from their sales and they have a finite amount of use before it wont work for anyone.
Its also the game publisher's right to charge for whatever they want. You as the customer has to decide if its worth it.
There is so much complaining in this thread and I don't get why. Mabye because I'm a pc gamer and we haven't had trade ins for a long time but just be smarter with your money, it will serve you well in life if your smart with your money.
Actually I would sell games exactly like I would sell music or movies or tv shows or any other entertainment items. Why should selling games be any different than selling of the other entertainment items?
How would u sell mp3s bought from itunes or zune market place ? How would you sell tv shows bought on itunes ?
Perhaps you'd get away with selling cds or movies on disc but they don't exactly retain thier value long and are normaly under $10 right off the bat. The industry around selling both used is dieing.
It's only different when the new owners are making demands on the original producer. A DVD, CD or book has no long term upkeep cost. If they did, you'd see the same kind of one time codes being used by movie studios to make sure people who buy used DVDs aren't costing them money using a resource they didn't pay anything for.
I don't see how this makes it any diffrent. You can still buy and sell your game. This doesn't stop you from doing it.
There are only as many people playing as there were new copies sold, and despite used sales those numbers tend to diminish over time, and with the vast majority of titles those numbers drop rapidly. When I trade/sell my game, I give away my ability to play online and pass it on to someone else. This isn't piracy where you potentially have more people playing online than have bought the game. What difference does it make who's face is on the other end of the screen? Someone bought the game which gave them the ability to play online and someone is playing it.
Put it this way: They should be collecting enough revenue from each copy sold to support online gaming for that copy for it's realistic shelf life, which might be 2-3 years on a big title. If I buy the game and play it for three years, or whether three different people play over that three years makes no difference. It's still one copy playing online for the "life" of that game. A game with a big trade-in rate early in its life is not likely to have strong legs as that's a sign of low replay value.
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