Digital Ownership: Why we lost today

[DrOswald]

But games purchased this way have a severe flaw. You have no ownership of the game. You have a licence to play it, but you do not own it.

Congratz, this is pretty much how all media has been since the late 80's, digital or not. No one ever has, or ever will, "own" media they bought.

DRM wouldn't have changed anything at all. Valve/Sony/EA wouldn't had to re-think anything. the only difference is that we would have had more DRM then needed,

But you would have been able to sell digital games for once! Isn't that something? You could have lent and sold digital content!

Now we have nothing. No progress at all

I don't think one step forward in digital ownership is worth several steps backwards in physical media ownership.

Right now we have an acceptable arrangement in at least physical ownership. If we give that up then there are no bargaining chips left. The Xbox One would have been nice step forward in digital ownership (if their family share plan and the ability to sell digital games was ever real and as good as they said it was, which has been called into question.) But it would have been at the cost of our rights in physical ownership.

It would not be smart for us to give up our rights of ownership for a possibly empty promise from Microsoft. Because once we give up our rights of ownership there will be no going back.

 

[Schadrach]

If it makes you feel any better, there's a rumour going around that Steam might bring game sharing, which I'm pretty excited about.. So there's that..

Honestly, I'd be happy if Steam would add three features, either separately or in combination:

1. Let you activate CD keys and provide the game as a Steam gift inventory item. This would make trading Steam keys a *lot* less risky, since all sides would be guaranteed to get what they were promised.

2. Flag Steam gifts in inventory as being allowed on the Steam market, rather than merely tradeable. Set fees on market sale of gifts to be higher than on other items, including both the standard cut for Valve and a cut for the developer/publisher, at a rate chosen by the developer or publisher.

3. Allow you to "box up" Steam titles for which the publisher doesn't expressly prohibit this feature -- removing the game from your library and placing it in your Steam inventory as a gift, allowing it to be traded or sold on the market.

 

[Anthony Corrigan]

If it makes you feel any better, there's a rumour going around that Steam might bring game sharing, which I'm pretty excited about.. So there's that..

Honestly, I'd be happy if Steam would add three features, either separately or in combination:

1. Let you activate CD keys and provide the game as a Steam gift inventory item. This would make trading Steam keys a *lot* less risky, since all sides would be guaranteed to get what they were promised.

2. Flag Steam gifts in inventory as being allowed on the Steam market, rather than merely tradeable. Set fees on market sale of gifts to be higher than on other items, including both the standard cut for Valve and a cut for the developer/publisher, at a rate chosen by the developer or publisher.

3. Allow you to "box up" Steam titles for which the publisher doesn't expressly prohibit this feature -- removing the game from your library and placing it in your Steam inventory as a gift, allowing it to be traded or sold on the market.

Why should a publisher have any right to determine what you can do with your property? Does Holden tell you what you can do with your car?

The EU courts have ruled that people have a right to sell digital content and hopefully this will spread to Australia. Governments enforcing consumer rights are the only way that companies will actually give back those rights which should never have been allowed to slip away in the first place

 

[Rickin10]

This is an incredibly short sighted argument, especially when it seems another company seems to be picking up digital redistribution and rights management. This victory is defined as such, because this is the first time I have seen an industry giant buckle to pressure of consumers, it proved that we as a community are not powerless, and that products should cater to us and not publishers. Hopefully that means companies will listen to us and our vision for the future, instead of merely directing and herding us like sheep. A digital rights overhaul will come, but not like this, not without a battle, we cannot let something like that be defined without our wishes being heard, the debate over digital rights and product license is too important to let one company decide on.

Particularly when the whole 'Family Share Plan' which was used as the one carrot for the many sticks was an utter piece of deception by Microsoft.

 

[Schadrach]

If it makes you feel any better, there's a rumour going around that Steam might bring game sharing, which I'm pretty excited about.. So there's that..

Honestly, I'd be happy if Steam would add three features, either separately or in combination:

1. Let you activate CD keys and provide the game as a Steam gift inventory item. This would make trading Steam keys a *lot* less risky, since all sides would be guaranteed to get what they were promised.

2. Flag Steam gifts in inventory as being allowed on the Steam market, rather than merely tradeable. Set fees on market sale of gifts to be higher than on other items, including both the standard cut for Valve and a cut for the developer/publisher, at a rate chosen by the developer or publisher.

3. Allow you to "box up" Steam titles for which the publisher doesn't expressly prohibit this feature -- removing the game from your library and placing it in your Steam inventory as a gift, allowing it to be traded or sold on the market.

Why should a publisher have any right to determine what you can do with your property? Does Holden tell you what you can do with your car?

Regarding (2) or (3)? Because (2) is primarily as an incentive to get publishers to not be strongly against the idea (because Steam needs publishers behind them to do anything like this, an online store is useless if it has no products), and (3) has to consider cases where there are technical or other hurdles (for example cases where a serial number is applied to an account outside Steam itself, such as MMOs or other games that interact with third party online services) which means either Steam being required to evaluate all titles for features that might make repackaging the game unreasonable, or leave it up to publishers to explicitly exclude titles.

 

[Anthony Corrigan]

How about steam just follows the law, the EU courts ruled people have a right to sell digital content and hopefully other countries will follow suit and pass laws. Screw publishers its time this became a legislative issue

 

[nevarran]

No they don't. Gog sells an exe with no DRM or any protection, I can download, put it on a thumb drive and install it on my internet lacking PC and it wont notice. Even steam has offline mode and can run without the net for an extended period of time (a few months idk, never needed to use it beyond a week). Both of them though are a different category to games bought on live or PSN where they want to push their next system when it comes out (especially Microsoft, Sony has a better history of supporting their older systems. Cultural difference between Japan and USA).

I said GoG doesn't, didn't I? I know what GoG is. But that's DRM free old games, very very few new titles. I don't think you can compare it to Steam. I was asking how the other digital retailers, the guy mentioned, work.
And again you're pushing MS into the conversation. I'm not saying X180 would've been a paradise for digital games. All I'm saying is had they have stayed on their course, that would've made the digital distribution much more popular, on every platform.

 

[Trueflame]

How is this the fault of gamers? Microsoft could have kept some of those actually good features while getting rid of all the bad ones that people complained about. Instead they chose to be petulant children and say "if we can't have our way, we'll take all your toys too!" and did just that. That's on them, not on us.

 

[Pirate Of PC Master race]

Part one: Sharing

Now since we are talking about ideal condition, let's go through the current sharing system.
someone can buy the game, then gives the game, then that person gives to someone again, and let's repeat this for about 100 times. +100 gamers have enjoyed the one disk. Not so sure what's the problem here.

Part two: Selling

So it's like gamestop, but now MS has COMPLETE(Because gamestop still have to face those small companies and ebay) monopoly. If my history of marketing taught me anything, monopoly usually benefits the company over customers(And I assume that you are not the company here?). So things could only get worse for the customers.

Part three: The DRM

...
Because of this, it is necessary to ensure that the person who is playing a copy of a game actually owns it. Since you didn't need the disc to play at all and 10 people can access it the same time, it changed the nature of the media.

The way it was set up, if you sold the disc without selling the license, you and 10 people still had full access to the game. This is the other side of selling, in that you lose access to something when you sell it.

It isn't fair at all to allow you sell something and still access it. It breaks the whole disadvantage of selling if you still have full access to the content.

I am sorry, but I thought you are suppose to tell me that HOW DOES DRM BENEFIT ME. In this entire paragraph, I saw nothing that actually benefit ME. I think you are one of those cooperate stick sucking type, but I digress.

Yeah yeah. Disk can break if you are careless, but I know I am not, and I still have Starcraft Original disk from 12 years ago.

Part four: Speculation on what could have been

Yeah. So all those crap you had to defend for the sake of reselling the digital games back to the companies which has complete monopoly over the market? I think that is pretty good idea.

Incidentally, I am price of the Nigeria and I have 5 million dollars in my bank account. If you give me $200 to escape, I will give you 30% of my fortune.


So, I would like to ask you, taciturnCandid, to do this for me and the future. I want you to grab the nearest sharp object and stick in to your right eye, and replace your right eye with mechanical eye which is currently in development. If you don't, I would consider that you killed the first progress of cybernatic future of mankind and being science hating jerk.

I'll be mourning the loss of change over here if you didn't do so.

P.S: statistics show that poking out one of your eyes reduces the chance of eye cancer by 50%! I believe this is great benefit for you.

Edit: grammer mistakes.

Edit 2: I always said that we need change of perspective sometimes, and I think I got the point. If "we" mean the money grabbing bunch of bastards gaming industry, this all makes sense!

Enabling less people to play the game, monopoly of reselling market and customer controlling DRM = More money for "us"!

So yeah. It's truly the day "we" lost.

 

[Weaver]

You couldn't sell your digital games under the old model unless they had a disk.
Also, the family sharing turned out to be bullshit. What it meant was you could share with anyone for up to an hour, then they'd be directed to the MS store to buy it.

Sure sounds like you own your unshareable, untradeable digital content to me.

 

[ryessknight]

And here come the microsoft toadys and there forum posts. Gonna be seeing alot of thread ops like this now sigh. Doesnt matter that microsoft pulled the drm, the xbones still shit and microsofts still stupid for even trying the crap they pulled.

 

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

*sighs*

Hey, I kind of want to end this now. Here is goes.

Steam and Origin are not the only digital distribution site out there. I just got five great games from GOG. You know what's great about it? All DRM free. That means as long as I have access to the data that's on my computer or now saved to one of my various micro sd cards... I own the game. Own it. It is mine. Free and clear.

You can add caveats if you want ("Oh, it's Good Ole Games, so they aren't current" 'Poker Night at the Inventory', 'Torchlight', 'Evoland', 'Hotline Miami', 'The Witcher 2', 'Arma II', 'Fez', 'Don't Starve', 'Strike Suit Zero' aren't current?), but the fact of the matter is that your statements only hold up weight if you go by your selected arguments.

I will not EVER dispute that Steam is currently the titan of digital distribution. But what I will say that if you try, you can find DRM free products that are not pirated. So, yeah, go compare Steam and Xbox's failed system all you want. You might be right. However, I have now about twenty games that no one controls how I play but myself. No internet connection, just as long as I have the data, it's all mine.

Xbox. Would. Have. Never. Offered. That.

 

[Haakmed]

I still don't fully understand this argument that developers are in some way deserving of second hand sales revenue. If you sell something to a friend and that friend sells it to someone else you don't get a cent from that transaction so what makes game developers so different? If they want to keep making money off of a game then support it after with good quality DLC. Bethesda does a good job with this on their games, and when the fancy edition of it comes out with all of the DLC included they get new sales again as well as selling the DLC. All this complaining from developers needing money from second hand sales feels like entitled whining.

 

[RicoADF]

I said GoG doesn't, didn't I? I know what GoG is. But that's DRM free old games, very very few new titles. I don't think you can compare it to Steam. I was asking how the other digital retailers, the guy mentioned, work.
And again you're pushing MS into the conversation. I'm not saying X180 would've been a paradise for digital games. All I'm saying is had they have stayed on their course, that would've made the digital distribution much more popular, on every platform.

My apologies, I misread what you said (was about to head to bed )
Actually gog has quite a few newer games like Assassin's Creed and the Witcher series, their starting to broaden into the mass market. However if you mean only new games well theres gamersgate, green man gaming and many more where you can get non steam games that run offline without issue. Only a few games require steam, most are sold without steam at all it hasn't got a monopoly at all. The way I suggested X1 support digital with the offline was basically how most games are sold online on PC, I simply applied it to console and added the family feature MS was pushing.
As for X1, well it would have set a bad precedent, both because of the PR and when they shut the servers down, so yeah it might have made digital more popular but it would have screwed us the consumer.

I still don't fully understand this argument that developers are in some way deserving of second hand sales revenue. If you sell something to a friend and that friend sells it to someone else you don't get a cent from that transaction so what makes game developers so different? If they want to keep making money off of a game then support it after with good quality DLC. Bethesda does a good job with this on their games, and when the fancy edition of it comes out with all of the DLC included they get new sales again as well as selling the DLC. All this complaining from developers needing money from second hand sales feels like entitled whining.

Nothing, their entitled brats that want to double dip because they think their 'special'.

 

[Anthony Corrigan]

Even this whole thing about DLC is just sad, what happened to the days where you bought a game and it was yours and if there was more story to tell the devs brought out an expansion pack or a sequal and THAT'S how they made money into the future. Diablo 2 comes to mind

DLC has gone from a convenient way to distribute expansion packs to another way to fleece customers after they have bought the game, ESPECIALLY the "Day 1 DLC" idiocy

 

[RJ 17]

Alas! The evil DRM has been defeated!

I believe the word you're looking for here is "Huzzah!" as "Alas!" implies regret or sorrow.

"Alas, poor Yorick...I knew him, Horatio."
"Our allies would have been here by now but, alas, they got bogged down in the swamp."

Beyond that, any of the points I would have made have already been made on the first page of the topic. So I'll just sum things up by saying that not all progress is good progress. New Coke was "progress", the Dreamcast was "progress"...hell, Diablo III and it's Real Money Auction House was "progress".

 

[Lovely Mixture]

Beyond that, any of the points I would have made have already been made on the first page of the topic. So I'll just sum things up by saying that not all progress is good progress. New Coke was "progress", the Dreamcast was "progress"...hell, Diablo III and it's Real Money Auction House was "progress".

You know what? You could make a whole damn movie about this.

Nicholas Cage plays Ron Attrick who has to find a way to sell his company's newest product. He has to convince the consumers that having them lose their rights is actually "progress."