That may be, but if that's the case then law is determined by morality. Morality is not determined by law. Therefor the law is still nothing more than a superfluous addition to this debate.Dulcinea said:
Lionhead: "Piracy these days on PC is probably less problematic than second-hand sales on the Xbox"
- Thread starter Delusibeta
- Start date
Recommended Videos
Yeah, given that everyone knows its legal (the case someone mentioned notwithstanding) I don't expect any mass movement to stop used game sales. All I would expect is for developers to start taking action against it (project $10, more digital distribution) and for customers to not complain about it; after all, used games are not a publisher/developer's market; just the game store's.FalloutJack said:
I'm still surprised that people are claiming used games to be the same as used cars. Essentially, games can be called a "service", much like a hooker, because when you pay for it you're not really taking any individual item away from the original owner. There's a disc, but that disc itself has a negligible cost. They're a dime a dozen.
Let's compare it to a ferris wheel at a park. It cost lots of money to build that ferris wheel, but the electricity involved in making it spin is almost zero, so not worth considering. For $60, you buy a ticket that says "The bearer of this ticket is entitled to UNLIMITED rides on this here ferris wheel!" You ride the wheel a number of times, but like anyone, you get bored. So you sell that ticket to another person. It hasn't really lost any of its worth, so you charge the full $60. He can then move on to someone else, and potentially (ridiculously low potential) the whole park could just buy it from the next person in line.
The key here being: That ticket is not a material good; it represents a sort of "permanent ownership license". There is no ecological recycling involved, whereas there IS if you buy a used car or a used shirt or a used house.
Amount of money Publishers get from Piracy: 0 (or sometimes negative if it's stolen from their own site costing them bandwidth).
Amount they get from Theft: Negative Cost
Amount of money Publishers get from Used Sales: Full Price of Game Once, then 0 for repetitive sales.
However, money is being transferred in a used game sale, and it's not a complete negative vacuum like Lionhead wants to think. Where does it go? Into the wages of other people who then support gaming, who will buy new (and yes occasionally more used) games, who will drive up demand for gaming, in a way that piracy or theft cannot (new systems, computer hardware, guide books, controllers and other sorts of things). Or, further buy things unrelated to gaming, like other needs or wants, which then leads those people to being capable of buying new games whereas they wouldn't have that money otherwise, etc.
All of which is lost when a company treats legitimate business as theft, or builds around legal business in a way as to make others suffer for their own profit. They either become incapable of buying games (new or used), incensed against the gaming industry seeing the situation as an 'us vs. you' scenario and less likely to buy and support gaming altogether (or pirate said games).
I'll tell you what, Lionhead. Fable 3 sucked, and I sold it because it was garbage. The fact I was able to get some money back meant I was able to buy a different game on the 360, which supported your home platform, and alleviated the stress of having bought a crappy game. That's 60 dollars you still got from me. The net loss was still mine to bare for your shitty fucking game, so you the person that lost money in the transaction was still me.
But I guess next time I know my options, at least the ones you'd want, is and all or nothing gamble on a game that will suck for 60 dollars (a wager I and many like me can't afford in this economy), don't buy your game at all and spend money in a different hobby, or just take the 5 finger discount you don't seem to think effects you as badly.
Amount they get from Theft: Negative Cost
Amount of money Publishers get from Used Sales: Full Price of Game Once, then 0 for repetitive sales.
However, money is being transferred in a used game sale, and it's not a complete negative vacuum like Lionhead wants to think. Where does it go? Into the wages of other people who then support gaming, who will buy new (and yes occasionally more used) games, who will drive up demand for gaming, in a way that piracy or theft cannot (new systems, computer hardware, guide books, controllers and other sorts of things). Or, further buy things unrelated to gaming, like other needs or wants, which then leads those people to being capable of buying new games whereas they wouldn't have that money otherwise, etc.
All of which is lost when a company treats legitimate business as theft, or builds around legal business in a way as to make others suffer for their own profit. They either become incapable of buying games (new or used), incensed against the gaming industry seeing the situation as an 'us vs. you' scenario and less likely to buy and support gaming altogether (or pirate said games).
I'll tell you what, Lionhead. Fable 3 sucked, and I sold it because it was garbage. The fact I was able to get some money back meant I was able to buy a different game on the 360, which supported your home platform, and alleviated the stress of having bought a crappy game. That's 60 dollars you still got from me. The net loss was still mine to bare for your shitty fucking game, so you the person that lost money in the transaction was still me.
But I guess next time I know my options, at least the ones you'd want, is and all or nothing gamble on a game that will suck for 60 dollars (a wager I and many like me can't afford in this economy), don't buy your game at all and spend money in a different hobby, or just take the 5 finger discount you don't seem to think effects you as badly.
It's by no means worse, and I don't think that he ever implied that. What he said is that it's more common, and therefore they lost more money due to it. The uneducated gamer doesn't know how to pirate, but also doesn't know that his saving a few bucks is hurting the devs.
Games shops today such as EB games depend on thier preowned program. Competition has eroded the profit margin on games, so they need preowned to pay thier employee's. I for one am for preowned, as the copy of the game is still legit, we the buyer get the game slightly cheaper and a few more people in our towns and countries get to keep thier jobs.
Also things would become more dependant on DRM, which is bad for us with capped internet plans.
Also things would become more dependant on DRM, which is bad for us with capped internet plans.
Assuming that "into the wages" part means game stores, there's this weird perception that individual stores like GameStop are absolutely essential to the well-being of gaming....publishers will find an effective way to get their game sold, and game players will find a way to buy games, no matter whether GameStop exists or not. If used game sales somehow went away, I guarantee game stores would still be able to survive.Damien Granz said:
Not supporting piracy or theft as an alternative, just pointing out a flaw.
Hey here's a thought.
I own Bioshock 2 and Halo Reach Legendary edition. Bioshock 2 I got from a steam sale, and Halo Reach I got on release day. It's not important that I own these games, but what is important is why I own them.
So why?
Because I bought thier previous games preowned and I loved them. Thing is if I didn't get them as cheap as I did, I probably would never have bought them at all, and in turn I never would have bought thier sequels (or in Halo's case, prequel
)
My point is that I don't believe preowned is as bad as developers think. Surely I'm not the only one who's done something like that? Ever borrowed a friends game, loved it and went and bought the game itself, or a sequel?
I own Bioshock 2 and Halo Reach Legendary edition. Bioshock 2 I got from a steam sale, and Halo Reach I got on release day. It's not important that I own these games, but what is important is why I own them.
So why?
Because I bought thier previous games preowned and I loved them. Thing is if I didn't get them as cheap as I did, I probably would never have bought them at all, and in turn I never would have bought thier sequels (or in Halo's case, prequel
)My point is that I don't believe preowned is as bad as developers think. Surely I'm not the only one who's done something like that? Ever borrowed a friends game, loved it and went and bought the game itself, or a sequel?
The case mentioned before is a different case from game software. Most professional level software is sold as a licence based service rather than as a single use licence bound to a physical product. That means pro level software can be installed on as many machines as you've purchased licences for, and should replacement of the software be required, it can be done so without buying an entirely new licence for it.Katana314 said:
When the licences in question are non-transferable it's illegal to sell them.
I think even new game sales have no benifit for developers after the first few weeks. Say gamestop buys 100 copies of portal 2. They sell all these copies in the first 3 days so they order 75 more. These copies sell out in 6 days so gamestop buys 50 more because they are still selling quickly. They sell 35 in the next 3 weeks and the rest have their prices reduced because no one is buying them anymore. Eventaully they finnaly sell all their copies of portal 2 but they do not order anymore becuase no one will buy them. So those last 50 copies do not benifit the delelopers because they do not cause gamestop to order anymore copies of portal 2.
This also makes think used games are not that bad too because developers make most of their money at launch before there are even any used games. Even if you get rid of used games most of the that would buy them would wait for the prices of the new ones to be lowered which will not make the developers any money. Also gamestop is not going to buy extra copies to sell to people that want to pay less because once the price drops to 50 dollars gamestop is actually losing money on those games.
Also here is a link to a video about used games.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqNRBm0szc4&feature=mh_lolz&list=LLWw_p0MGZ9TI
This also makes think used games are not that bad too because developers make most of their money at launch before there are even any used games. Even if you get rid of used games most of the that would buy them would wait for the prices of the new ones to be lowered which will not make the developers any money. Also gamestop is not going to buy extra copies to sell to people that want to pay less because once the price drops to 50 dollars gamestop is actually losing money on those games.
Also here is a link to a video about used games.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqNRBm0szc4&feature=mh_lolz&list=LLWw_p0MGZ9TI