Like the MPAA??? ROFL

Originally Posted By tincup2 (3 JUL 2012 1:11pm)

Originally Posted By Fnord (3 JUL 2012 10:38am)

EU just passed a law that will make it illegal for companies to prevent you from reselling your games.

 

From what i read the EU is more sensible/populist about the internet than in the States. Here, our laws and regulations always seem to be written by by big business...

 

 

Wow you have really thougt this through. Ok, but let me pose to you this question? What if you buy something digitally such as here at JA. How can you sell that, and from our (company) standpoint how can we be sure if you'e sold it that you have also deleted your version. Hence Steam etc. Adobe does the rental of their CS master suite products, and they get a lot of students etc to rent it. I rented my text books for this term and have had great success saving money in that arena. As to the Ereaders I have owned every version of the nook BN has come out with including the new glonook (which is AMAZING BTW). I own a digital library as long as I have the nook, but should the nook break or I decide to go to the knidle then what of all the money I have invested. So in some ways it bites you in the A%*, and in some ways it benefits you, because I don't have a zillion bookshelves in my house anymore. Although lots of books around me makes me look smart 

@Trav I think that would be perfect in fact I think that technologically speaking it would not be hard to have a hard coded release date embedded into the software. Do you play the games simultaneously on both computers? If so why?

Originally Posted By tincup2 (4 JUL 2012 12:34pm)

Trav - I agree with you on DRM [and if dev's can concoct a perfect DRM that limits a prodct to one owner without killing their business kudos to them ], but not on re-sale. I still don't understand how software products are that much different than cars, books or candles and all the other products of our lives that we have been buying, selling, trading and giving away forever.

 

If you want to rent software like you rent an apartment, or a car etc., fine, but that's not where we are with software yet. When you walk out of the store with a game, you have bought it, not rented it. They are free to print whatever prohibitions they want in the EULA, but the underlying concept of the EULA itself is straining against the age-old traditions of commercial exchange.

 

It's not unethical people depriving dev's their due - they make their money on the sale like any other vendor. The reverse is the case - ordinary people doing what ordinary people do are cast as villans. Criminal ex nilo. We're beginning to see other similar instances in other facets of life; prohibiting people from drilling water wells because some complany has bought 'exclusive' water rights in a country, or agribusiness prohibiting farmers from retaining some of their harvest to plant next year's crops [a tradition dating back thousands of years] simply becasue they bought their seeds - these are cousins of the EULA restrictions and the legal basis for their legitimacy is hardly fixed and is in constant flux and challenge in the courts.

 

Where leasing software makes sense is business; the dev's full tech support, updates, assistance, backing etc., is a tangible value to the business customer. And cable/TV  is a good example of rented entertainment that doesn't raise particularly vexing questions that challange traditional customs. Similarly e-readers offer a very 'rentable' form of reading, and are not too troublesome - except for the large scale issues of written-word ownership [ie Google bookbase vs public/national libraries etc] 

 

An example of the point I'm trying to make, imagine if book publishers started adding EULAs limiting the reading of the book to one person, who could be prosecuted for lending, selling, trading or gifting it after purchase. If you were a normal upstanding person you would say "fat chance" which would be both the correct, ethical and democratci thing to say, and fully in keeping with millenia-old tradition. If entertainment software is so different it's not yet obvious to me how, why and in what way...

 

Yikes sorry for all the "wind"!

Eliot - hmmm.. Your examples of renting textbooks and so forth are indeed more examples of traditional renting - use it for a while for a fee, then return it. And e-readers are as I also agree with, successfull examples of rented reading.

But the problem as I see it is that it's just not clear *what* is actually hapening when digital games are bought/leased/rented etc.., and until digital products are embued with a stand-alone identity to each iteration [and you suggest a hardcoded solution] the rules of the road will be difficult to compile comprehensively since they are be in constant conflict with ordinary acceptible behavior.

And as I already concured, if dev's concoct a perfect DRM - one that limits use to the original buyer [and I agree with Trav buyers should be entitled to install in at least a couple of machines - the "home/away", "business/work" and "you/kids" scenarios] without inconvenience, kudos, and the problem is solved. In a massive bandwith world a high volume/low price model would probably work just as well.

But returing to my kickoff question, I'm still curious if Steam's prohibition against re-selling second hand games [with or without an account] has survived legal scruitiny. The precedents must certainly be against a "hard" interpretation of the prohibition, and I suspect Steam and others are well aware of this, and are just seeing how far they can reach. Non exchange of accounts is probably more defensible... ten years and we should have the answer...

The difference between a game and a car though, is that you're going to need to keep that car because you're going to need to drive it every day - you're not going to drive it just once and then pass it on to the next person, and then he's going to drive it once and pass it on to the next person again - the car industry would go bankrupt pretty quickly were that to happen!

I  must say that i REALLY don't like the model that Elliot mentioned - in our household we love replaying our games over and over... not least because we prefer RPG's and strategy games; -i still play a lot of my strategies from 6, 7 8 years ago, just different factions and scenarios, so such a model would most definitely not work for us, and that's one of the reasons that i've always disliked a 2 or 3 times install limit check on my games, since i tend to upgrade my system every 2 or 3 years, which usually then requires a re-install of games.

If it comes to pass that one cannot "buy to keep" games anymore, i guess i'd have to hang on to old hardware and stick to playing my old games...

May GOG live forever and ever and ever...         

Originally Posted By Traveller (5 JUL 2012 8:38am)

 If it comes to pass that one cannot "buy to keep" games anymore, i guess i'd have to hang on to old hardware and stick to playing my old games...

 

and will be the sad conclusion...

After years of patient eBay searching I finally procured a copy of the rather obscure and quite atmospheric AG "Celtica", and for a very reasonable price. This is the kind of pleasant and rewarding pasttime that threatens to become an illegal and depraved practice at the hands of our corporate masters... 

@ Trav My futureistic musings of intelectual property protection is that there will be a buffet style of games, music, books etc. I cannot see indivdual sales going dead though. Things like iTunes are still very popular even with spotify alive and well. DVD sales are also still alive and well even though netfilx has been around for quite some time. I don't think they will do away with the individual sales, they will just have another alternative that is more appealing than piracy. That's at least how most companies are trying to circumvent piracy. Some of the other methods like installing at only one workstation or locking it to a personal and non-transferable account will not survive in the long run in my opinion. 

@Tincup, congrats on the score. Why did you choose the username tincup?

@ Elliot  haha... funny you should ask. Some time in the late 90's I was playing TOCA 1 where you are asked to enter a name for yourself as a race car driver. For reasons unknown to me "tincup" just popped into my mind, perhaps appealing in a reverse modesty-bravado sort of way. Since then I often use tincup as my game name, and username on a few game-related sites such as JA. Recently I've heard tincup is also a golf term, slang for the hole.. 

Interesting. All along I thought it was something defined by the Urban Dictionary.

I say keep usernames short and easy to spell and pronounce.

I also have an ald skool tin meauring cup in the kitchen that I'm fond of.

TinCup is also a town in Colorado. It's deep in the mountains and absolutley gorgeous. It is a golf term and also a movie. Nice, I just thought it was sort of random and I am not far from Tincup, Colorado, hence the reason for asking.

@CB I agree they should be short, easy to remember and definitive of the user. That is not the way the kids do it on Xbox Live, for them it's how close they can get to saying something nasty without getting themselves banned. I'v also seen a lot of violent type names as well. Not saying this is indicitive of the culture, but it's an interesting twist. 

Originally Posted By tincup2 (14 JUL 2012 8:13am)

I also have an ald skool tin meauring cup in the kitchen that I'm fond of.

Now how did this jump off topic??....Oh, OK, never mind.

Originally Posted By Elliot (17 JUL 2012 12:23pm)

...it's how close they can get to saying something nasty without getting themselves banned. I'v also seen a lot of violent type names as well. Not saying this is indicitive of the culture, but it's an interesting twist. 

I tried a few other usernames in the distant past but I doubt anyone remembers.

A signature quality of the topics I start seems to be how off-topic thay can get lol... But that's okay since DRM is pretty depressing just thinking about..

Although I sometimes find some DRM's annoying, they've never caused issues on any of my computers (even Starforce games ran fine).

Steam is another story. I still don't/won't buy download-only games but Steam somehow wormed its way into my system anyway and left behind some malware. I think it got in when I installed The Rockin' Dead. Managed to get rid of it by going into msconfig and removing it from my start-up files.

Originally Posted By MKB (1 AUG 2012 1:49am)

 

even Starforce games ran fine).

...the name that shall not be uttered...

From what I have seen and used with our DRM it's nice because it's got the trial, and you don't have to uninstall and reinstall when you buy the full game. As far as I can see it's non intrusive and does not do rootkit things like the previously mentioned thread regarding Ubisoft. What do you guys think?

***Honest opinions permitted and encouraged.

Originally Posted By Fnord (3 JUL 2012 4:38pm)

Originally Posted By Elliot (3 JUL 2012 11:35am)

@Fnord I wasn't aware of the onlive expiriment. I'll have to check that out. I kinda think it might become the way of the future with all intelectual property. As for the EU passing that law I guess that Steam could repeal, IDK the way things work here in the US it seems to take forever for anything to get done, IDK how it runs in the EU, but admittedly they seemingly have a much smoother beauraracy than we do. 

 

Chances are that OnLive is a bit too early. You really need a high-speed internet connection to use it, and while I'm spoiled with one, because Sweden's government made a large push towards making sure that Sweden would stay ahead of the curve when it comes to building out the infrastructure for those kinds of things about 10 years ago, and have been able to lay the groundwork that many companies have been able to build upon, many other countries lack this luxury. Germany, for an example, lacks high-speed internet outside of their most densely populated areas (from what I've heard at least).

 

It seems that OnLive was too soon, because they're discontinuing their services by the end of the year

http://kotaku.com/5935905/report-onlives-servers-outnumbered-users-online-by-more-than-2+to+1?utm_campaign=socialflow_kotaku_facebook&utm_source=kotaku_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

Although i'm sure this is the future of gaming, high-speed internet connections aren't as widespread like you said.

Originally Posted By CB (17 JUL 2012 7:32pm)

 

 

I tried a few other usernames in the distant past but I doubt anyone remembers.

 

 

Well, i do remember Camaroboy...

Good news Ubisoft will be dropping most of it's DRM, in favour of a one-time online activation 

http://kotaku.com/5940535/ubisoft-gives-up-on-its-stupid-pc-drm?utm_campaign=socialflow_kotaku_facebook&utm_source=kotaku_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

Originally Posted By markornikov (5 SEP 2012 2:00am)

Good news Ubisoft will be dropping most of it's DRM, in favour of a one-time online activation 

 

http://kotaku.com/5940535/ubisoft-gives-up-on-its-stupid-pc-drm?utm_campaign=socialflow_kotaku_facebook&utm_source=kotaku_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

WHOO-HOOO!!!          

Though, i must say i don't mind codes and/or disc-checks, as long as they're compatible with 7 criteria and don't mess up your PC.

Originally Posted By markornikov (5 SEP 2012 2:00am)

Good news Ubisoft will be dropping most of it's DRM, in favour of a one-time online activation 

 

http://kotaku.com/5940535/ubisoft-gives-up-on-its-stupid-pc-drm?utm_campaign=socialflow_kotaku_facebook&utm_source=kotaku_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

YES!!!!!!

We beat them to the punch with that on our DRM. That is exactly what we do. 

EA on the other hand still doesn't get it,  the multiplayer is just a lame excuse for DRM 

http://www.destructoid.com/ea-boss-proudly-refuses-to-publish-single-player-games-234402.phtml

Dragon Age III doesn't need multiplayer you dummies! Not that the franchise was ruined anyway

Originally Posted By markornikov (7 SEP 2012 2:07am)

Not that the franchise was ruined anyway

Originally Posted By tincup2 (17 JUL 2012 8:04pm)

A signature quality of the topics I start seems to be how off-topic thay can get lol... But that's okay since DRM is pretty depressing just thinking about..

I have to say that as an average consumer/gamer I really hate DRM.  I acknowledge that their may be a legitimate need/use for it but it is still a long term annoyance.

I've been buying/collecting games since the early '90's.  Just getting games to install and run back then was part of the challenge of playing.  Game collecting came to be an addiction - a colorful cataloged tradition.

Then there were games to be downloaded.  For the longest time I resisted downloading.  There was pleasure in posessing an actual cd/dvd in the original box.  I started downloading with GOG.  I really love that web-site.  You can buy your games, download them straight-away to play and they play (for the most part) without further tinkering.  Plus they offer really old games  that may be problematic to get to run on today's software/hardware.  And now newer games as well.  All without DRM.  You may not be able to re-sell your game, but you can back it up and play it without needing to go online.

This opened the door to Steam.   I bought a few games on Steam.  The sale prices for these were just too hard to resist and I look on them as potentially temporary purchases, but the DRM is too restrictive.  I don't like having to go online to play a single player game. Period.  But I accept the need to as this is just the way Steam operates.  I object to limited activations as I do like to replay games and formatting and the purchase of new computers is routine for pc game players.

Big Fish is my other web-site that I will download games from.  When I started downloading from them I did  not immediately recognize the DRM.  I just thought you downloaded and did a one-time activation when you were ready to play.  If you're familiar with Big Fish you know that isn't so.  You are tied to the web-site for as long as you have an interest in the game.  You must go online every time you play.

DRM  --  Then there is the biggest reason for hating DRM.  IT CAUSES YOUR GAMES TO NOT WORK!  Not all the time obviously, but all too frequently.  The extra work you  have to put in to research the problem and find a solution/work-around for it should be discounted from the cost of the game!

Well...  I realize that this posting may not be quite on target with tincup2's original posting (which I found very interesting) but I thought I would share some of my experience and opinion.

PS:  As for the subject of Box games tied to Steam without any indication...  I don't even want to think about it.  If I really want to play the game I just have to accept this as a possibility.  No, I don't think it's fair and as far as I'm concerned it isn't or shoudn't be legal to impose this restriction without notice.  Caveat Emptor!