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[PaleFox]

You know, I hear about stuff like this and it kind of frightens me about the future of gaming. It's not like other markets don't have thriving second-hand markets, books especially (Half Price Books for example), yet they continue to exist. People will still stand in huge lines or to get the newest whatever-thing to come down the corporate factory line.

Then I remember I only have a ps2 and it cheers me up immensely. You all thought lack of internet was a bad thing, but Epic has proven you wrong once and for all. And, actually, that begs a question: how exactly have the game companies survived so long if second hand traders apparently pose great enough of a threat to risk alienating huge numbers of people?

[skaldicpoet9]

And, actually, that begs a question: how exactly have the game companies survived so long if second hand traders apparently pose great enough of a threat to risk alienating huge numbers of people?

It doesn't. They are just a bunch of greedy asshats that want more money.

[Valter]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure this is a rumor. Nobody's gonna let this stand if it actually happens.

[agj]

This is not DLC, this is DRM (screw these buzzwords).

it's gonna be okay

Please, make it happen!

[team_q]

Download your games, it will make them cheaper and faster to come out.
Piracy does eat some potential sales, if you say otherwise you are a pirate, its pretty simple.
I don't agree with reselling of any media, I think its a broken system to begin with, I don't consider Songs and Movies analogous with lawn mowers.
If you buy a new game, the experience is the same as if you bought an old game, it plays the same, it looks the same.
After you watch a movie or a game, you have effectively consumed it, its worth to you drops by a large margin, you can afford to sell it for a reduced price because your value of it is low, whereas someone else's high. Were as a car or a lawnmower, your
perceived value is a lot closer to whom you are selling it.

Basically why should Gamestop make money for holding onto a game?

[skaldicpoet9]

Piracy does eat some potential sales, if you say otherwise you are a pirate, its pretty simple.

I never said that it didn't eat some potential sales but I don't believe that it impacts the market as dramatically as we are led to believe. Many studies have shown that most people that pirate something are not going to purchase said product in the first place. While there is a certain percentage of people who will pirate something and would have bought the item in question if not for the ease of pirating the same product.

If you buy a new game, the experience is the same as if you bought an old game, it plays the same, it looks the same.

I disagree. I have bought many used copies of video games, movies and books. They do not look the same, play the same or read the same. I have bought games that looked fine but then inexplicably froze in the middle of the game, I have had the same thing happen to movies as well and have had books that were missing pages. The point of having a used market is that some people can stand to take something that has experienced wear and tear in it's lifetime and take the risk that that product may or may not be as good as it was in it's original condition. Movies and game disks get scratches, the boxes get torn and the quality of the item diminishes over time as do books. I pay for something new to have that item in a expected condition and I expect that it play perfectly. This is why you don't get a warranty for a used item, you just take the risk that that item may not function as originally intended. You shouldn't be expected to pay full price for something that has already been used and may not be up to an expected quality.

Download your games, it will make them cheaper and faster to come out.

Now this is different. If a company is issuing a new copy to each person to download and guarantees that the owner be able to download that game again if anything were to happen to their copy I don't see any problem with that. Every person is getting the same quality of product. Like I said before I think that digital distribution is the model in which both gamers and developers can win. My only problem with the digital model is the fact that a lot of people still prefer physical media to something that can't touch. However, that is the only hurdle I really see.

[PaleFox]

The problem with restricting second hand stuff is that it makes obscure games hard to find. I mean, I understand Gears of War will probably be reprinted until everyone hates it, but supposing they had made it (somehow) that Panzer Dragoon Saga only worked for the initial owner. Sure, some could buy shrink wrapped copies, but everyone else gets the shaft, and no one gets to try it. Atlus is also not really seemingly into the whole digital distribution model, so they probably would not do such a thing, but the point remains. Many things go out of print, and games are no exception.

Naturally, if we do move to the point where you can always get a copy of any game ever made over the internet, THEN maybe you could justify removing our ability to get them elsewhere.

Maybe.

[skaldicpoet9]

The problem with restricting second hand stuff is that it makes obscure games hard to find.

This is a very true, I hadn't thought of this at all. I think that this also adds more weight to the fact that there should be a second hand market for games due to the fact that not all publishers will be around forever to sell their games and ultimately some games will become discontinued because of this. It would be sad to not be able to find a game because it was discontinued and there was no used market to purchase it from.

[Don Andy]

It would be sad to not be able to find a game because it was discontinued and there was no used market to purchase it from.

Which in turn brings us to piracy again.

[team_q]

I never said that it didn't eat some potential sales but I don't believe that it impacts the market as dramatically as we are led to believe. Many studies have shown that most people that pirate something are not going to purchase said product in the first place. While there is a certain percentage of people who will pirate something and would have bought the item in question if not for the ease of pirating the same product.

Piracy is part of what is killing retail PC games, it's not the second hand market, most second hand stores, including Gamestop, no longer take  ANY PC games for trade in. The other parts are: cost to have a good rig, and the difference between Console and PC games narrowing.

I disagree. I have bought many used copies of video games, movies and books. They do not look the same, play the same or read the same. I have bought games that looked fine but then inexplicably froze in the middle of the game, I have had the same thing happen to movies as well and have had books that were missing pages. The point of having a used market is that some people can stand to take something that has experienced wear and tear in it's lifetime and take the risk that that product may or may not be as good as it was in it's original condition. Movies and game disks get scratches, the boxes get torn and the quality of the item diminishes over time as do books. I pay for something new to have that item in a expected condition and I expect that it play perfectly. This is why you don't get a warranty for a used item, you just take the risk that that item may not function as originally intended. You shouldn't be expected to pay full price for something that has already been used and may not be up to an expected quality.

But that is an argument against deteriorating distribution media, not the content its self. Also, I don't think anyone suggested you should pay full price for used stuff.

The problem with restricting second hand stuff is that it makes obscure games hard to find.

I agree, but the current second hand market is already there, I don't see that changing, I have bought a tonne of second hand ps2 games off Ebay, but I wish there was a way I could buy them from the developer, Ico is still Ico, now, or 7 years ago.

Which in turn brings us to piracy again.

Clever people make the distinction between abandonware and piracy.

[Corpus]

Second-hand traders are a huge problem. They have been for years. Places like GameStop get something ridiculous like 70%* of their revenue from second-hand games that just cycle round and round at the top rung of the commercial ladder without any of the money reaching the developers at the bottom.

They just haven't ever done that much about it before because, well... what can they do?

*Probably an exaggeration, but I've read a few different reports about different shops all stating that the majority of their revenue is earned this way.

[Alex May]

This really has nothing to do with Epic or DLC, so first thing's first: you guys going "Fuck Epic!" and "Fuck DLC!" need to clear your heads.

Next, we need to determine whether the secondary market is a problem at all. In that respect it is related to the piracy problem in that to an extent the "problem" could in fact be an asset in certain ways, while obviously destructive in others. It is all (or mostly) going back into the industry either to retail or publishers; a portion of the money that people are getting from preowned is going to new game sales. In the end people are perceiving preowned as a problem, and it's hard to argue with that when you go into a store to buy a new game and get offered a preowned copy right at the point of sale.

Next up. Nobody wants to get rid of the secondary market. It is everyone's right to sell on games that they have bought. The problem is that it's happening within days of a game's release and is being pushed over new product. We need to find out why this is happening.

The root of the problem is that games are very expensive, far more so than films and music. This increases the likelihood that consumers want to return the product when they're done, to offset the cost of their next game. This is the core reason why this problem has manifested itself.

To solve this, we need to either reduce the price of game software or increase the value or the longevity of the product, or its collectable value. As it is, things just aren't going well and retail is fighting back the best way it can.

If we reduce game prices, we need to reduce cost of development, which in turn may mean shorter games.

If we increase product lifespan, with free DLC for instance, that's okay, but it costs money to do that, and you're catering for a gradually diminishing audience as some players will tire of the product earlier than others.

There are other things that can be done as a disincentive against tradeins and reselling, like offering free DLC at the point of sale for new copies, or more destructively withholding critical content from the game for preowned sales as mentioned by the developer to whom Capps was talking (which is obviously a completely ridiculous scenario, but a testament to how dire the perceived situation has become).

[Skofo]

This really has nothing to do with Epic or DLC, so first thing's first: you guys going "Fuck Epic!" and "Fuck DLC!" need to clear your heads.

Yes, it does have a lot to do with Epic and yes, it has everything to do with DLC. You're the one that needs to clear your head.

If we increase product lifespan, with free DLC for instance, that's okay, but it costs money to do that, and you're catering for a gradually diminishing audience as some players will tire of the product earlier than others.

That is if you assume that more people cannot buy your games. Valve has been making  giant free Team Fortress 2 updates and movies ever since it was released a year ago and presumably they still will for quite a while. It has been giving them nice continuous marketing for their game, it has been getting more people to buy it and their other games and it has made pretty much all of their existing consumers happy.

The solution to having DLC and still keeping the game feeling like a game and not a salesman is to either have no DLC in the first place or make DLC free. Making it mandatory for anyone that rented, was given or bought a used copy of the game is plain greedy anti-consumerist backwards bullshit. Saying that Epic not getting money from products that they didn't sell is a "huge" problem is a stupid lie. That is the way it has always worked with everything people physically bought ever since mankind existed. There is no problem here, game publishers just want to leech as much money as possible.

If publishers still insist one wanting to try to stop getting people to pass on their games, the answer is simple: distribute it on PC via Steam or something similar. Steam locks your game to one account and lets you download copies of it wherever. EA has done something similar with Spore, except they managed to squeeze in some money-grubbing restrictions like you needing to continuously pay to be able to redownload your game and letting you install it only 3 times or something, which pissed everybody off.

[Alex May]

Actually nobody complained about preowned until game stores started pushing used over new product. That is where the complaint comes from. As I said it really has nothing to do with DLC beyond the fact that it was mentioned as a (rather extreme) way to destroy the resale value of a product, an act that is unfair on the consumer.

Downloadable content in and of itself is really not the issue. Neither is Epic. The preowned market is. That's an area that affects the whole industry - retail, publishers, developers, consumers. It goes way beyond one company (Epic) and one concept (DLC).

One thing we could talk about with respect to Epic, if that must be the subject, is that with Gears 2 they give away content for new retail copies at the point of sale. If you buy it new you get 5 extra multiplayer maps. That is one incentive to buy the product new. It does not particularly harm the product in the box, but adds value to new retail purchases. It's one way to reduce the resale value of the game, but we should IMO be looking at why the problem exists in the first place before trying to solve it by treating the symptoms.


edit: by the way, this:

This really has nothing to do with Epic or DLC, so first thing's first: you guys going "Fuck Epic!" and "Fuck DLC!" need to clear your heads.

Yes, it does have a lot to do with Epic and yes, it has everything to do with DLC. You're the one that needs to clear your head.

Is around half way down the argument pyramid. I know you can do better than that If you read my post it is pretty clear why I have made that statement, so if you wish to refute it you need to state why and how.

[adamrobo]

You know, I hear about stuff like this and it kind of frightens me about the future of gaming.

I wouldn't worry too much. This issue just leads to indie games being more relevant and attractive to consumers, because creators that care about their players don't do things like this to them.

This really is intertwined with the DRM issue. It stems from fear, and results in punishing the people who pay for your product.

Just like many pirates wouldn't buy a game even if they couldn't crack it, there are people who wouldn't buy a game new if they couldn't resell it a week later. And just like people didn't buy Spore because of its ridiculous DRM limitations, there are people who will refuse to buy games that participate in this "ending not included" mentality.

I think 2D Boy and Petri are leading the way by forsaking DRM out of respect for the honest players, acknowledging that those are the ones that it hurts.

[Skofo]

This really has nothing to do with Epic or DLC, so first thing's first: you guys going "Fuck Epic!" and "Fuck DLC!" need to clear your heads.

Yes, it does have a lot to do with Epic and yes, it has everything to do with DLC. You're the one that needs to clear your head.

Is around half way down the argument pyramid. I know you can do better than that If you read my post it is pretty clear why I have made that statement, so if you wish to refute it you need to state why and how.

If you're going to follow some random pyramid, I could say the same about you in the statement I was originally replying to.

This really has nothing to do with Epic or DLC, so first thing's first: you guys going "Fuck Epic!" and "Fuck DLC!" need to clear your heads.

I think this falls between "Contradiction" and "Responding to Tone". Ass hat.

You might not have been talking about Epic or DLC, but everybody else was. You can't just say what this topic is about when there's a link about Epic and a new DLC method and criticism of it in the original post. I think it is obvious that this topic is about Epic and DLC, I did not think that there was a need to write an essay deducing specifically why this isn't about unicorns or whatever you wanted to tell everyone that this is about.

[Alex May]

This really has nothing to do with Epic or DLC, so first thing's first: you guys going "Fuck Epic!" and "Fuck DLC!" need to clear your heads.

Yes, it does have a lot to do with Epic and yes, it has everything to do with DLC. You're the one that needs to clear your head.

Is around half way down the argument pyramid. I know you can do better than that If you read my post it is pretty clear why I have made that statement, so if you wish to refute it you need to state why and how.

If you're going to follow some random pyramid, I could say the same about you in the statement I was originally replying to.

This really has nothing to do with Epic or DLC, so first thing's first: you guys going "Fuck Epic!" and "Fuck DLC!" need to clear your heads.

I think this falls between "Contradiction" and "Responding to Tone". Ass hat.

I can't see any line of argument here from you beyond flailing around so I assume you concede the point.

I'll add another point to my line chart.

Debate is fine. Just try not to be such an asshole about it? For the common good 

I am tryiiiinnng. I think that you may notice a steady decline in my assholishness since my earlier posts. Someone needs to make a line chart...

[Alex May]

You might not have been talking about Epic or DLC, but everybody else was. You can't just say what this topic is about when there's a link about Epic and new DLC methoda in the original post and criticism of it. I think it is obvious that this topic is about Epic and DLC, I did not think that there was a need to write an essay deducing specifically why this isn't about unicorns or whatever you wanted to tell everyone that this is about.

Well, imagine for a minute you're talking directly to Mike Capps. He's just said to you that the secondary market is considered a critical point in the US market and developers are so wound up by it that they're considering some fairly draconian countermeasures - not implementing them, considering them.

How would you respond to that? would it be "Fuck you Epic! Ass hat! Screw DLC!" or would it be along the lines of reasoned debate about retail practices and publisher pricing models, game longevity, stuff like that?

[Valter]

Honestly, I think this entire argument has been all over the place.

First: I know that selling the endings of games to people is dumb, and gamer society will reject it if anybody tries to implement it.

Second: I love DLC. It lets companies do so much more with a game once it's come out. Besides, nobody's forcing you to buy DLC things. A lot of it's stuff like "making of" videos and soundtracks. And if you don't want to download the legendary map pack for Halo 3 for 800 points, then don't. It's like releasing an expansion pack for a game that has already come out, which is a system that has been in place on computers for, well, ever.

Are the WoW players up in arms over the fact that Wrath of the Lich King costs money? I suppose Blizzard should have just released WoW 6 years later so that they could give us a whole game instead of trying to force this bullshit expansion shit on us, huh?

Third: Epic is making shitloads of money right now, so I don't think they give a flying fuck about what you think about them.

[Skofo]

Well, imagine for a minute you're talking directly to Mike Capps. He's just said to you that the secondary market is considered a critical point in the US market and developers are so wound up by it that they're considering some fairly draconian countermeasures - not implementing them, considering them.

I am not talking to Mike Capps. If I were and the situation called for it, I would try to reason with him about his DLC ideas. In the same sense, if I were talking to a unicorn I would talk about all the things it has skewered with its horn. But I am not talking to either of them at the moment, so your point is moot.

How would you respond to that? would it be "Fuck you Epic! Ass hat! Screw DLC!" or would it be along the lines of reasoned debate about retail practices and publisher pricing models, game longevity, stuff like that?

So far in this topic I have been debating points like the answer to whether or not the second-hand market is a "huge" problem for Epic, viable alternatives for the draconian DRM/DLC they are considering, and the morality and greed of Epic for considering this. Epic's, or at least Mike Capps' (who is an important representative of Epic, therefore his considerations reflect on the entire company) ideas have fueled my continuous rage for anti-consumerist DRM and DLC, so it's understandable that I am at least a little emotional about this. I thought better of you than to resort to criticizing petty things in a debate like my anger for Epic considering this, especially if you at all believed in that little pyramid of yours. You will find your argument third from the bottom in Graham's hierarchy of disagreement. Plus, there is no obligation for me to even debate in this topic. I have every right to express my discontent without citing reasons for it, even though I have. You then come barging in out of nowhere telling everyone that this has nothing to do with Epic or DLC, when it very clearly does. Do I need to quote the original post and the article it links to for you?

Also, I thought you out of all people would get this; I called you an ass hat to be ironic. Read your pyramid again.