A solution to the problem of used game sales?...

[Owyn_Merrilin]

What, who offers lifetime rentals?

The entire industry. What do you think they're selling you with that "license" bs?

Critical distinction being that you don't continuously pay for a game you've bought (apart from subs MMO's)...

Hence the "lifetime" part of "lifetime rental." I'm not sure what else to call a product you pay money for but don't actually own. Also, there's precedent for it. When Star Wars first came out on VHS, Fox released it as rental only. The video rental stores gave people the option of a "lifetime rental" for an inflated fee. The sad part? That was closer to a sale than games that are bought without being called a rental are today.

 

[TehCookie]

So stop used game sales by stop selling games? The sad part is that is what's happening and people are happy for it. I'm of the few who'd rather own my own copy than be subjected to their terms and whims. I enjoy old games, and being able to play them. I want to be able to play current games when they get old, but with a system like that it's completely out of my hands. Worst part it they will probably make you pay to play a game you already own. They're already doing that with HD collections, but at least if you took care of the original ones they will still play so it's optional. If the publisher held control over if you could play the games or not they could stop renting out the classic version and if you wanted to still play it you would have to pay for the newer once. Sure the money will be going to the right places, but how much will it save the consumers? Even if boxes cost more, that's a trade off I'm willing to make if it means I can actually play my games when I want to (aka when my internet is down [small]FUCK YOU STEAM[/small].)

 

[Epona]

Another "Let me help find a way for the greedy publishers to get money they aren't entitled to" thread.

Here's a hint: There is no PROBLEM with used sales, it is part of a healthy economy.

 

[renegade7]

Used games are as much of a problem as garage sales. People who want money and have things they no longer want sell those things for money.

Anyone notice that the secondhand market is only a 'problem' to game publishers? That's because they CAN force you to do things like pay for a $15 online 'VIP' pass. And I might add, calling it VIP which stands for "Very Important Person" is just the final insult...if the customer was important, EA wouldn't be so desperately trying to fuck them in the wallet would they?

Should Levi Strauss be able to charge me a $15 fine (because that's basically what it is, a ticket for the heinous crime of trying to save a few dollars) because I bought my jeans at a secondhand shop?

Here's a solution: make games people don't want to get rid of. EXPAND on your currently released games. Free DLC will keep people interested in a game, if the game doesn't become boring no one will want to sell it. Additionally, the huge amount of content that will eventually be amassed will be a selling point developers can use.

If you release a new iteration to a game every 6 months, you render the current one obsolete. What do people do with obsolete stuff? They get rid of it. And the secondhand market enables them to get some of their money back for doing that. It's kind of a win-win for the customer (and also the secondhand dealer, be that eBay, Gamestop, etc.) Only one getting screwed is the publisher, who just HAD to render their current product obsolete by releasing a new billion dollar cash cow.

 

[Atmos Duality]

I'm not talking about contractual agreements here, just renting directly from a publisher. You could stop renting at anytime.

What stops me from paying a dollar and keeping a rental copy of Skyrim for all eternity?
A rental agreement. You pay for time to use a product; not the product itself.

Besides, these are luxury goods anyway no-one forces you to buy them.

And nobody forces the Publishers or Developers to make those games; it's just one way among many to make money.

See how irrelevant that was?

Better technology, better writing, better designs and better games all cost money.

Technology, I'll agree with. But money alone does not make quality games.

There are plenty of older titles made on a fraction of the budget of any modern AAA title that have just as good writing than what's on the market. (Grim Fandango, anyone?)

Design...there are technological requirements for certain game archetypes (mechanical design). For graphical design, well, it represents potential; after all, I can't run Crysis on a graphing calculator.
But even the best graphics are no replacement for styling and aesthetics.

Arguing that awesome graphics alone make a game better is like arguing that a quality canvas will make even the worst artist's work look like Michelangelo.

As you said DD is most likely an inevitablity now. Publishers will always need to raise more money from consumers in order to provide more innovation.

"More stagnation" would be more accurate.
The game franchise that sets sales records year after year does not "innovate" at all; it's one of the most predictable, bland, formulaic designs in gaming; just ahead of the WoW-clone in terms of similarity.

If anything a rental system gives you full access to a game for as long as you want.

No it doesn't.
The Publisher dictates that since they own the service, and control the goods.
This is by no means a guarantee.

It'll be in the publishers interest to make games that appeal to players so they'll spend more on the creative team - with the money they didn't miss out on by selling units to retailers and having them circulate the used market for a few years... Win win win as far as I can tell.

The elimination of arbitrage will only help the publishers; not necessarily the developers.
Why? At least in the AAA game business, the developers are paid via contract amount no matter how good/bad it sells. The availability/demand for FUTURE contracts might be impacted, but it's false to assume they get paid royalties per game standard.

It's not much different from Hollywood's studio system or the record label companies, really.

In order to achieve this, the customer has to give up yet more securities against abuse, and total control of the product. They will have to get married to a proprietary online system. I've already briefly described why Total-Services are not innately good for the customer past the idealisms being preached here.

 

[Xanthious]

Gee so if they were getting more money they have neither a legal or moral right to then the prices would go down? That's what you're saying? Well you may as well say if people just started mailing publishers envelopes full of money then they might think of lowering game prices. Get the fuck out of here with that nonsense. Developers and publishers need to man the fuck up, shut their mouths get the sand out of their girl parts and make games. If they can't do that then maybe they should find a new line of work.

In the ENTIRE history of people making and selling goods has there ever been a single maker and seller of goods that enjoys the perk of being immune to second hand sales. Why in the blue hell do video game makers think they are all of a sudden special? I'm sick and fucking tired about hearing developers and publishers ***** whine and moan about something they, again, have no legal or moral claim to. Fuck em, fuck em all. They can go bugger each other with rusty railroad spikes for all I care before I will ever think they deserve a single penny from used sales.

Here's the thing, the video game industry is posting record profits in an economy that's one of the worst we've seen since the great depression and they have the fucking gull to ***** about used game sales. Again, fuck each and every last one of them. I'm sorry they aren't making big enough piles of cash but the fact of the matter is most any other industry would gladly trade places to be where video games are right now.

Let me be clear as a fucking bell. If somebody works in the gaming industry and feels this way then they deserve to lose their fucking job and go work someplace they can't inconvenience me and people like me anymore. I hear McDonalds is usually hiring. Barring that I'd imagine jizz moppers have a high rate of turn around. These arrogant fucks don't realize how good they have it right now and if they can't learn to start appreciating just how good their industry is then they don't deserve to work in it.

The thing they don't like to come out and say is yeah PC gaming did away with used sales and is now primarily a direct download system. Yep, and look how PC gaming has changed. It's a shadow of what it used to be. If you remove physical media and used sales from consoles you effectively will neuter the gaming industry.

The bottom line is this, use games and piracy aren't the things killing gaming right now, greed is. These publishers and developers see and treat gamers as nothing more than an piggy bank that they can nickel and dime to death at their leisure. They need to stop blaming the people paying their fucking bills for their problems and start looking inward at any one of hundreds of cancers killing them from the inside.

 

[Rawne1980]

All a distributer would need to do in order to protect from pirates is upgrade their coding so it cannot be cracked. Easier said than done i'm sure.

Try impossible.

Doesn't matter how they code it the crackers will break it, it's what they do.

Publishers and Devs need their games to remain relatively pirate free for as long as possible to make money off it.

The problem is, the crackers in the "scene" if you will have been doing it for many years and know what they are doing. It isn't a bunch of kids with pc's playing at hacking, some folks make a living off it.

So while you have professional coders working for a developer you also have professionals working at cracking that code who, quite a lot of the time, are simply better at it.

Ubisoft have been trying since AC2 to stop people pirating their games. They claimed AC2 would be uncrackable ..... it took a couple of groups 24 hours to get it cracked and up for download.

(Disclaimer - while I don't pirate games myself I do know a few people who do so i'm not totally oblivious to what goes on.

Back on topic again......

I saw someone else mention it and I wanted to bring it up as well because it seems to be a point a lot of people miss when declaring used games "the devil".

If used games vanished completely that doesn't mean the publisher/developer will make any more money.

For instance I own quite a few used games, had used games not been around I simply wouldn't have purchased them at all. Either way the developer/publisher would make no money.

People buy used because they are cheap. I'm not talking £5 off a new release i'm talking about those that cost literally £5. Now I can afford to buy new, and I do for some games i'm too impatient to wait for, but for others .... why spend £40 when I can wait a few months and get it on Amazon for a fraction of that?

Some people will always go for the cheapest option. If a cheap option isn't around then they will just forget about it and move on.

 

[Biosophilogical]

Competition from the same other developers that essentially agreed on a standard $60 price point? Oligopolistic competition is only slightly better than monopolistic; without the retailers, the prices will not drop the way you think they will. If anything, they'll go up.

Right now I can rent an unlimited amount of brand new AAA games, three games at a time on lovefilm each month for around £15. Say I played 6 games in that months that would amount to $360!! There's no chance anyone would rent one game for 5 days say for even $30 let alone $60.

If they offered discounts for re-rental and then a decreasing amount to continually rent after reaching certain time points that should be enough to keep hardcore players interested.

I thought you were talking "lifetime rentals." If we're looking at weekly, the day they go to that system is the day I and a ton of other gamers find a new hobby.

Amen, brother (sister?).

If the next Souls/Elder Scrolls/Pokemon/etc game that came out and caught my attention came with a nice little label saying "Prepare to pay for this game EVERY TIME you want to play it, mwhahahahaha" I'd stop playing new videogames, period. Part of the appeal of outright buying a game is that you have no financial time limit. Once I have the game, I can put it in and play it without having to worry about anything more than if I could be using my time better. Being forced to pay for a game every time you play it will act as a disincentive to play, because you'd lose money just from loading it up.

So you'd end up with a host of disgruntled gamers resorting to piracy, used-game sales (to get pre-change games as cheaply as they can[footnote]And possibly to avoid any 'sneaky' new stuff they try and throw into new copies of old games to make you pay[/footnote]), playing everything offline (to avoid 'the man'), and overall, you'd just hurt the games industry.

 

[Worgen]

Absolutely not, I would not pay for a game like that, it doesn't fit what I want out of buying a game, I refuse to buy a game if its drm states it has limited installs since that feels like renting, I refuse to be any part of this stupid plan.

 

[Racecarlock]

The thing is, and this is what always scares the shit out of me, what's to stop them from not only charging full price for rentals, but then going "Oop, a week has passed. You must now pay full price again to keep playing.". And what's to stop them from making that price $100 a game? I mean, sure, after a while consumer backlash might destroy that system, but it would be a pretty dark period of time. And what if people are complacent? What then? Well, every game would have a large timed fee for a price.

And for those that say "Well, publishers wouldn't do that", well, John Ricitiello wants to charge money for bullet reloads. http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.354961-EA-John-Riccitiello-thinking-about-charging-money-for-bullets-in-games

Do you really think publishers are that worthy of your trust? It's a business, and they can do what they want, but so is gamestop. Used games save me money. Besides which, they are neither entitled to money from every used purchase, nor are they entitled to customers. They have the balls to call me entitled while demanding I pay $10 extra for every used purchase. Seriously, fuck them. If I still feel that developers should get my money after I play my used purchase and like it, I'll send them some money in an envelope. If I have those spare funds.

 

[80Maxwell08]

I'm going to say no because of the business itself right now rather than the idea. For the record though I don't like your idea. That being said there are VERY FEW publishers who can be even remotely trusted right now and the same can be said for distributors. The entire industry is trying to slit everyone's throats rather than even trying to work together so publishers hate game stores because of used games and game stores hate publishers because of horrible deals. A website I used to go to ran a game store for a while but had to shut down because of money issues. They said that used sales are one of the main reasons that they even make any money because new game sales give them virtually nothing. Everyone is just trying to kill each other and I personally hope they all kill each other off so the people who aren't trying to cutthroat their way through the industry can rise up and actually start working on improving the industry as a whole.

 

[Gir1yG4m3r]

Please, everyone. Let Bioware have their money so they can hire better writers.

 

[TheMann]

Okay, real quick:

On a PC? It's an open platform Personal Computer. I was upset when I installed itunes and the damn thing copied all my MP3 into their damn format on it's own, doubling my music size with apple doppelgangers. I felt violated enough when that happened.

The default format on iTunes is .mp3, unless you bought it at the iTunes store in which case it's .m4a. What iTunes does, is duplicates the mp3 files and inserts them into the iTunes directory. And, yeah, I can see how duplication could bug some people but it's not a special format. An iTunes music file can be played by any software capable of playing mp3s. I'm not writing this to be "the asshole who corrects everyone", it's just something to keep in mind when dealing with that program.

Now onto the real subject:

For the record, why is it you feel like you own the media in the first place? You don't you own a license to use it. You don't even have the license to distribute, display or reproduce it either. The copyright holders own it.

Hey, I'd hate to break this to you but that's exactly what you own when you purchase a game or any piece of software for that matter: the license to personally use it. What do you think the "L" in EULA stands for? End User License Agreement. Of course you don't own the intellectual property and distribution rights, that's true with any medium, but you very much legally own the ability to use it. When you buy a piece of software, you are buying the personal use of it under the terms of a license set forth buy the creators and distributors of said software. If you bought a game then, congratulations, you are officially licensed to use it.

Why the OP's idea would make the world a dark bleak place, full of pain and general misery (I'm thinking like Mordor, or maybe Ry'leth):

If I'm understanding what the OP is suggesting correctly, it is that games should solely be playable for a paid period, after which more money is required to continue play. This all to combat the "scourge" of the used games market. So instead of a standard license which is usually along the lines of "for an amount of money you can install and play our game" it'd be "for a smaller amount of money, with you can install and play our game it for X amount of time, after which you can repay or quit." Here's why this would suck.

1. You truly would have to be online all the time to play. There would be absolutely no way to meter the time you spend playing the game without an ongoing connection. This is the kind of DRM that the head of Ubisoft only masturbates to.

2. This would be a ***** to implement. Servers would have to be created and constantly maintained to determine the playtimes of millions of customers worldwide. This would be quite expensive. This expense is the reason that MMOs are pretty much the only type of game to require a subscription fee; maintaining that volume of information is costly. This would drive up the price of the final product to the point that, even under a smaller time-based fee would cost the end user more.

3. This would slaughter any replay value a game has. I'm currently looking at my Steam client, which does indeed log how many hours I play each game. I, as of now, have sunk 83 hours into Portal. Portal takes only about 3.5 hours to complete on the first run through, but is a fun quirky game that good to experiment with. I've played 202 hours worth of Half Life 2, which is just a linear story-based shooter. Why? Because it's one of my favorite games and I like to go back and play my favorite parts now and then. Then I look at more open world games like Borderlands (125 hours), and think that if I payed by the hour I'd be broke. Say I beat a game on normal and want to challenge myself with nightmare mode? Well, that's going to cost me. And what about multiplayer? It sure would suck if I had to pay money every time I wanted to get my ass kicked in Starcraft (which is the usual outcome of me playing Starcraft). Also, goodbye mod community.

4. This would be a fucking hell for PC gamers. As TorqueConverter aptly mentioned, computers are open-platform machines. The variety of hardware and software found in them can vary quite a bit. If my framerate drops, do I still have to pay full price for that time? If I have to spend an hour or so tweaking the software so the game looks and plays as awesome as I want it to, do I shell out for that too? No thanks.

5. Developers would most likely hate this. Specifically the people trying to drive the story and merge it with the gameplay mechanics. The Single player story would take a huge hit. If you have a great story that takes about 14 hours worth of play to properly tell, you're going to have to find a way to compress that down at least by half. People are only going to be willing to pay for a game of a certain length, because the longer ones are obviously going to cost more. Gamers won't be as willing to immerse themselves in the experience if that immersion digs into their wallets. Character development would become miserably bad, and concepts like branching story lines and multiple endings would become near nonexistent due to financial infeasibility. If developers really takes pride in their work this would be the fucking apocalypse for them. This is basically like if a movie ticket's price depended on how long the film was. Peter Jackson probably would have had to compress each Lord of the Rings film down to 90 minutes. They wouldn't have been as good then.

Even if boxes cost more, that's a trade off I'm willing to make if it means I can actually play my games when I want to (aka when my internet is down [small]FUCK YOU STEAM[/small].)

Games on Steam are perfectly capable of being played offline. You don't even need an initial connection to do so. Why is it so many people here seem to think otherwise. Damn, this post went on way too long.

 

[TehCookie]

Even if boxes cost more, that's a trade off I'm willing to make if it means I can actually play my games when I want to (aka when my internet is down [small]FUCK YOU STEAM[/small].)

Games on Steam are perfectly capable of being played offline. You don't even need an initial connection to do so. Why is it so many people here seem to think otherwise. Damn, this post went on way too long.

Please tell me the secret then, when I bought Portal 2 my internet was down for a week and I was unable to instal it until I was back online even though I had the hardcopy. I'm not a computer genius, I put the CD in and run it, and that didn't work.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Even if boxes cost more, that's a trade off I'm willing to make if it means I can actually play my games when I want to (aka when my internet is down [small]FUCK YOU STEAM[/small].)

Games on Steam are perfectly capable of being played offline. You don't even need an initial connection to do so. Why is it so many people here seem to think otherwise. Damn, this post went on way too long.

If you don't log in to let Steamworks DRM get its confirmation check in, Offline Mode won't function. Generally, this check will last for 24hrs or until you end your current session (that is, you shut your computer down).

Steam has been a general pain in the ass for me and my friends before; since my friend didn't have Internet for the longest time. We actually piled into a car to go to some place with free Wifi just to get Steam to let us play the fucking games we paid for.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

Even if boxes cost more, that's a trade off I'm willing to make if it means I can actually play my games when I want to (aka when my internet is down [small]FUCK YOU STEAM[/small].)

Games on Steam are perfectly capable of being played offline. You don't even need an initial connection to do so. Why is it so many people here seem to think otherwise. Damn, this post went on way too long.

If you don't log in to let Steamworks DRM get its confirmation check in, Offline Mode won't function. Generally, this check will last for 24hrs or until you end your current session (that is, you shut your computer down).

Steam has been a general pain in the ass for me and my friends before; since my friend didn't have Internet for the longest time. We actually piled into a car to go to some place with free Wifi just to get Steam to let us play the fucking games we paid for.

I can vouch for this. Every time I take my laptop somewhere without internet or with crappy internet, I just expect to be unable to play my Steam games and plan accordingly. Offline mode only works if you've checked in with the DRM server quite recently. If you haven't done it in a few days, forget it, no games for you.

 

[TheMann]

Even if boxes cost more, that's a trade off I'm willing to make if it means I can actually play my games when I want to (aka when my internet is down [small]FUCK YOU STEAM[/small].)

Games on Steam are perfectly capable of being played offline. You don't even need an initial connection to do so. Why is it so many people here seem to think otherwise. Damn, this post went on way too long.

Please tell me the secret then, when I bought Portal 2 my internet was down for a week and I was unable to instal it until I was back online even though I had the hardcopy. I'm not a computer genius, I put the CD in and run it, and that didn't work.

Oh, I didn't know you hadn't installed it yet. Yeah, my bad, you do need internet for the initial install. I was talking about after that. It sucks your internet went down for a week. Did your ISP suffer a meltdown or something? Then again, where I live the entire power grid went down for 3 days once.

If you don't log in to let Steamworks DRM get its confirmation check in, Offline Mode won't function. Generally, this check will last for 24hrs or until you end your current session (that is, you shut your computer down).

Steam has been a general pain in the ass for me and my friends before; since my friend didn't have Internet for the longest time. We actually piled into a car to go to some place with free Wifi just to get Steam to let us play the fucking games we paid for.

I can vouch for this. Every time I take my laptop somewhere without internet or with crappy internet, I just expect to be unable to play my Steam games and plan accordingly. Offline mode only works if you've checked in with the DRM server quite recently. If you haven't done it in a few days, forget it, no games for you.

Hmm... okay. When I tested the offline mode I did so by closing out Steam, killing my internet connection completely, restarting my computer, then reopening Steam without turning the internet back on. The games worked fine. Now, you're saying it won't work if the machine isn't online for a day or so? Yeah, now I'm going to have to check that out. I just don't mind Steam because I don't find the DRM really all that intrusive, and I wouldn't have a game library nearly the size of the one I have if it weren't for Steam sales. They make it awfully cheap sometimes.

 

[TehCookie]

Even if boxes cost more, that's a trade off I'm willing to make if it means I can actually play my games when I want to (aka when my internet is down [small]FUCK YOU STEAM[/small].)

Games on Steam are perfectly capable of being played offline. You don't even need an initial connection to do so. Why is it so many people here seem to think otherwise. Damn, this post went on way too long.

Please tell me the secret then, when I bought Portal 2 my internet was down for a week and I was unable to instal it until I was back online even though I had the hardcopy. I'm not a computer genius, I put the CD in and run it, and that didn't work.

Oh, I didn't know you hadn't installed it yet. Yeah, my bad, you do need internet for the initial install. I was talking about after that. It sucks your internet went down for a week. Did your ISP suffer a meltdown or something? Then again, where I live the entire power grid went down for 3 days once.

Nah my router broke and my dad has it configured weird so he had to order a specific model that wasn't in any local store. I could play one of my non-steam games but Portal 2 was shiny and new. Not to mention it just kills sharing, and I don't mean p2p or something I'm talking about lending a friend your copy. My friends and I will buy different games so we can trade them around. Steams e-mail conformation makes it even more annoying since I can't just give them my password anymore. I have no idea why people celebrate that. I liked having freedom with your product.