Another blow against digital downloads

[Zeus]

You see, when something is given to me for "free", I expect to actually be able to use it whenever I damned well wish. Sony would like to change that

http://ps3.ign.com/articles/113/1137713p1.html

This is evil. Even Microshaft, the predatory fucks that they are, didn't lock me out of playing Carcassone or Undertow when they coughed them up for fucking up.

This epitomizes what I've always hated about digital downloads: lack of real ownership. You don't own those games, you simply own a license to use them as the great overlords see fit.

I never, ever even had a slight inclination to even consider getting Playstation Plus so I'm personally not missing out on jack shit. Even so, I can't help but get annoyed at their tactics.

[bovine]

You see, when something is given to me for "free", I expect to actually be able to use it whenever I damned well wish. Sony would like to change that

http://ps3.ign.com/articles/113/1137713p1.html

This is evil. Even Microshaft, the predatory fucks that they are, didn't lock me out of playing Carcassone or Undertow when they coughed them up for fucking up.

This epitomizes what I've always hated about digital downloads: lack of real ownership. You don't own those games, you simply own a license to use them as the great overlords see fit.

I never, ever even had a slight inclination to even consider getting Playstation Plus so I'm personally not missing out on jack shit. Even so, I can't help but get annoyed at their tactics.

Dead Nation for PSN is fun. $15 is a high price, but I do not mind paying for enjoyment.

[Zeus]

How the hell did Dead Nation enter this thread?

[Shrinweck]

Are you locked out even if you renew your subscription? The validity of a subscription-based gaming service isn't exactly what I would call evil.

[Lox]

It reminds me of the subscription-based music services where you pay a monthly fee to download as much music as you want, but as soon as your subscription lapses the music is unusable.

[Shrinweck]

Yeah, okay, I don't necessarily see a problem with that either - you're paying to use a service where they give something to you and if you stop paying them they stop giving you shit. Makes sense.

[Zeus]

Are you locked out even if you renew your subscription? The validity of a subscription-based gaming service isn't exactly what I would call evil.

But that's not what this is. This is an offer of a free game that you would otherwise pay to get if you sign up for their subscription package. It's not games that are made for and available exclusively for subscribers or even games that came out for subscribers first. They're taking an existing game that's basically no longer selling on PSN and offering it for free if you buy their service. Good idea to boost some interest, if done properly.

It's an incentive to get you to try Plus. It's rather obvious that no one gives a flyin' fuck about Plus, it's ridiculous for all but an extremely small portion of the population. So they go ahead and offer you this game for free (it costs 70% of the yearly subscription fee normally; double the three-month fee) to entice you. And how much you wanna bet the fact that it stops working if your subscription runs out is in extremely small print while "FREE" takes up 3/4 of your screen? That's where the evil part comes in. They suck you in and then kick you in the balls if you happen to take your time playing the games or wanna replay them later after you realize what a waste Plus is.

Essentially, they're trying to have their cake and eat it too. They wanna give it to you for free.....as long as they KEEP making money off of you. The initial money just ain't good enough. What if Microshaft made the freebies Carcassone and Undertow stop working after 2 months or made them unplayable unless you had Gold, would you have been pissed? For sure. At the very least you would have bitched about it pretty loudly (if you didn't have ADHD and are only interested in things for 12 seconds after release, that is). This is just as bad if not worse.

And what if Microshaft took half your game and made it unplayable if you didn't keep paying them money? Wouldn't that be a fucking horrible kick in the balls?.......hold on a sec......

[Zeus]

It reminds me of the subscription-based music services where you pay a monthly fee to download as much music as you want, but as soon as your subscription lapses the music is unusable.

Hold on, there are music subscription services where you can't even put the mp3 on your portable player and are forced to listen to them on your comp? What the fuck is the point of that even if it's $2 a month? It's easier, faster, and with a far better selection to just download the songs.

[Shrinweck]

I don't know, I don't really buy all that much on my 360. I don't really trust them 100% with giving me the future ability to play these games on future console iterations, which I guess plays into this thread. But you're looking at a guy who has basically only bought three brand new, full price 360 games this year and a few $5-$15 games.

Even with my 360 I still do 95% of my gaming on my PC.

I'm still not really seeing why you giving them money for a service, them giving incentives, and then them taking said incentives away if you stop giving them money. I guess it's mostly because I don't have a PS3 and don't really know what Plus really bestows upon you.

I'm still not going to claim 'evil'. Even if Steam decided to charge me money for future access of my games, which I wouldn't do, I wouldn't call that evil. This is hardly a blow against digital distribution. It's more like a business doing businesslike shit.

[Lox]

It reminds me of the subscription-based music services where you pay a monthly fee to download as much music as you want, but as soon as your subscription lapses the music is unusable.

Hold on, there are music subscription services where you can't even put the mp3 on your portable player and are forced to listen to them on your comp? What the fuck is the point of that even if it's $2 a month? It's easier, faster, and with a far better selection to just download the songs.

No, you could put the music on portable players, too. But then if you stopped paying and synced the player, you'd lose that music. Rhapsody and the new Napster operated that way, I believe.

[Zeus]

It reminds me of the subscription-based music services where you pay a monthly fee to download as much music as you want, but as soon as your subscription lapses the music is unusable.

Hold on, there are music subscription services where you can't even put the mp3 on your portable player and are forced to listen to them on your comp? What the fuck is the point of that even if it's $2 a month? It's easier, faster, and with a far better selection to just download the songs.

No, you could put the music on portable players, too. But then if you stopped paying and synced the player, you'd lose that music. Rhapsody and the new Napster operated that way, I believe.

So you could easily get around it then. Not a huge deal unless you're an idiot.

[Zeus]

I don't know, I don't really buy all that much on my 360. I don't really trust them 100% with giving me the future ability to play these games on future console iterations, which I guess plays into this thread. But you're looking at a guy who has basically only bought three brand new, full price 360 games this year and a few $5-$15 games.

Even with my 360 I still do 95% of my gaming on my PC.

I'm still not really seeing why you giving them money for a service, them giving incentives, and then them taking said incentives away if you stop giving them money. I guess it's mostly because I don't have a PS3 and don't really know what Plus really bestows upon you.

I'm still not going to claim 'evil'. Even if Steam decided to charge me money for future access of my games, which I wouldn't do, I wouldn't call that evil. This is hardly a blow against digital distribution. It's more like a business doing businesslike shit.

The blow against digital distribution is the exploitation of not actually owning the product you purchased. If you ever read the fine print in on your DVD purchases you'll find that you don't actually technically "own" the DVD. You own a license for unlimited views of that particular film on approved playback devices only (ie. devices which have paid their pound of flesh to the DVD Forum to make the player). THat means that technically, if you convert your toaster to play DVDs you are actually breaking your license agreement when you purchased that DVD are technically breaking the law.

Of course, that shit won't fly when you own a hard copy, not even in court. But these media companies have taken that idea and moved it over to digital distribution. Because it's a completely closed system, they can exploit that old licensing trick they've been trying to pull for years now. That's how you get the timed downloads which are movie rentals. That's not so bad since you know it's a rental and are paying the price accordingly. I see zero issues with that at all.

The problem comes when you extend it to full purchases, which is what this particular issue is. What they're offering with this "free" download is exactly the same as getting free bundled game when you purchase a system or those deals different retailers have where they toss in another game on top of the bundles for free. You wanna buy a 360? Get Forza 3 and Alan Wake for free. You wanna buy PSN Plus? Get Sam & Max season 3 for free. That's EXACTLY what this is being offered as. And that's what makes the gimping of the game if you cancel Plus very, very "evil".

Make no mistake about it, this is evil and something that consumers should not tolerate at all. But as you guys have proven above, consumers nowadays deserve to goosed by the companies

[Don]

You know when you stop paying a monthly fee to a MMORPG or any subscription game, they stop letting you play the game too even though you bought the game. You don't get some reduced functionality offline mode or anything. And no I don't think the bandwidth and maintenance cost for those is really that high or WoW wouldn't make more money than the rest of ActivisionBlizzard put together. It's just a matter of leverage.

[Shrinweck]

They don't make enough money off the initial purchase to keep creating new content, that's where the monthly fee should find value

[Zeus]

You know when you stop paying a monthly fee to a MMORPG or any subscription game, they stop letting you play the game too even though you bought the game. You don't get some reduced functionality offline mode or anything. And no I don't think the bandwidth and maintenance cost for those is really that high or WoW wouldn't make more money than the rest of ActivisionBlizzard put together. It's just a matter of leverage.

You wanna get me started on MMOs now?

[Zeus]

They don't make enough money off the initial purchase to keep creating new content, that's where the monthly fee should find value

In what? WoW? Aren't they charging $30 for a what, 8 year old game AND $15 a month?

Blizzard at the very least gives you value for your $15 per month. WoW the game has increased in size substantially (not including the expansions) and additional content is being delivered for the fee, unlike what Sony's trying to do with Sam and Max. Still doesn't forgive them for acting like Canadian banks for goosing their customers by double (banks triple) charging for the same content but it's better than most.

[Don]

I read somewhere that the cost to develop/maintain WoW is around $200 million and that's over its whole lifecycle. Let's say you got 5 million subscribers in Europe/NA, buying just the game + 2 expansions. That'd be $750 million there even with no subscription fee, which is a respectable return (not to mention if it didn't have a sub fee it'll probably sell quite a bit more copies). So no they don't actually need this money to develop the game. Again it's just a matter of leverage here. If a game like Guild Wars 2 which has no subscription fee sold 50 million copies and destroyed the MMORPG market, you can bet all the other MMORPGs will stop charging subscription fee too. But since this hasn't happened yet that gives considerable power to the MMOs.

I see no reason why you shouldn't expect to play everything you've paid for after your subscription ended. Sure I wouldn't expect to get the additional content, and I don't see how that's any different from what's being proposed here. I mean BNet doesn't charge you money to play there, and again bandwidth costs are very insignificant. The biggest cost in a MMORPG is the people (staff + CR), and I have no problem with non paying customers getting no support whatsoever. That'd be fair. Now of course there's no reason for anyone to do this because of leverage, but there's no inherent reason why you should lose the right to play whatever you paid for.

[SineSwiper]

[Tessian]

/best pic I could find

[Zeus]

The fact that you guys don't recognize this as a problem is the biggest issue of all

[Eric]

Because it's not?

Why do you feel you're entitled to play games that a subscription service allows you to have access to when your subscription lapses?

You could just buy those same games and own them with no subscription attached you know.

[Kupek]

I'm starting to see that I don't own a physical object as a feature, not a bug. I don't like having stuff around. You have to find a place to put it, and take it with you when you move.

[Don]

If enough people are outraged like Zeus then it'd matter. Since clearly this isn't the case, it wouldn't matter much. If peopel refuse to buy this service for the reasons cited, it'll fail, but honestly I don't think it's that big of a deal you stop getting service even if that service really costs them nothing.

[Zeus]

Because it's not?

Why do you feel you're entitled to play games that a subscription service allows you to have access to when your subscription lapses?

You could just buy those same games and own them with no subscription attached you know.

You're still missing the point. It's not a subscription game and sure as shit ain't bein' promoted as one. It's a regular retail game that's being given away as a promotion to get you to buy something.

If you were to buy a 360 and get both Alan Wake and Forza 3 for free but they only were playable for the first 3 months, wouldn't that piss you off? This is EXACTLY the same thing

[Zeus]

I'm starting to see that I don't own a physical object as a feature, not a bug. I don't like having stuff around. You have to find a place to put it, and take it with you when you move.

I broke up the response below into easily-skimmable, very short paragraphs for you to save you some time and allow you to blow by the stuff you don't wanna read.

And this is where sometimes I think people are a bit short-sighted, for lack of a better term. You don't wanna have stuff around? You're an anti-hoarder who likes to be as absolutely mobile as possible with the absolute minimum amount of "stuff" (or anything or anyone, really) anchoring you down? Fine, I can see that for a certain population that hasn't yet (and doesn't ever really want to) settle down. So take advantage of the multitude of other options having a physical disc over a digital download brings you, such as:

- selling the game outright for cash
- trading it for something else
- use Kijiji or other similar services to swap finished games with other people

Hell, if you only like to have at most 5 "active" games around at any time (even you have your Chrono Trigger as a keeper in the closet) and you pretty much just play through the games you get, you can even take advantage of the Trade 2 or Trade 3 deals at Best Buy or EB/Gamestop or the 50% additional credit or Gameplay Guarantee options at EB/Gamestop (or a combination thereof). For someone like you, I can't imagine you even wanting more than 5 current or active games available at any given time, so as long as you don't hold on to your game forever and a day, you can absolutely take advantage of this.

How the hell do you think I end up with basically every major release for every system? You think I can afford it with just my meager government salary, my wife on maternity leave, and having to pay for 3 mouths to feed (well, 2, the yougin' gets free food from mommy), a mortgage, and a car payment? You think I'd actually sacrifice my children's education fund to play a freakin' video game (we save a significant amount of money each month across many different funds, including education funds for the three kids)? No chance. I get it by paying $30 for that $70+tax game or just waiting for it used in 6 months (among many other legal scams). Options I wouldn't have if everything went digital download only.

So that's 4 additional options you can now use to stretch your gaming dollar. You can literally double the volume of titles you can enjoy.....and/or even get a return on your investment if you're "too busy". It's not uncommon for someone to buy Halo: Reach new for $60+tax and then within a week or two (it's a 10-12 hour campaign on Legendary for a decent player) get $50 cash for it (sometimes upwards of a month or more, like with Red Dead). With the 13% tax here, that means you paid about $20 for that game instead of $60. Hell, you could just rent it for a weekend for $7 and do the same thing. For someone who's been in school longer than any human being should, I figure stretching your budget as much as possible would be a major benefit. You lose any option to do anything like this if you only have digital download as a purchasing option.

So, unless the price is adjusted accordingly to account for the loss of options, you're quite literally just throwing your money in the garbage. Why not use that extra cash to either play more games (if you so desire), eat out a couple more times a month, buy that new pair of MMA spandex shorts you've been so ankerin' for, or, hell, blow it on impressing a woman you wanna lay? Not that you need it, my liege, but I'm just sayin' for us commoners..... :-)

I have yet to hear any possible logical argument (ie. not a "I just like it better" one) which could possibly place a digital download above a physical disc aside from availability. The clutter one is decent but is so easily avoided it falls apart under any real scrutiny. I haven't heard one yet from anyone here and every gamer I talk to in my city far prefers a physical disc for the reasons I mentioned. And please don't bring up the "time" argument. What we're talking about here is an hour or two a month, max. Often can even be done while you're doing "more important things". It's basically negligible.

And, obviously, we're talking about comparing the purchasing options of titles available in both formats, here.

[Shrinweck]

Basically all the options and advantages you named don't hold any value to me and since I tend to be fairly picky about the games I play I'm hardly breaking the bank with my game purchasing habits. Five is the number of clicks it takes for me to purchase a game off steam and a couple hours later I can be playing it. For someone without a car that's enough of an advantage alone for me to stick with digital delivery. Oh, and since the Valve/Steam offices are located in WA (or something like that) I don't have to pay taxes.

Second hand games have never been something I've been interested in unless the game is too old to be sold new without it being overpriced as a collector's item or whatever.

[Don]

I don't see how it's worse to buy some game that's 75% off in Steam for $12 as opposed to finding it in the recycle bin for $20 at a Gamestop and then trying it for 1/4th of a recycle bin game when you're done. Since there's very few game with worthwhile packaging material anymore (and a used game probably will be missing them anyway) there's really no physical value for owning the game. If anything the used game you've to also worry about what if the game breaks, while a digital download is pretty much always going to work and costs nothing to download again even if for some reason the download got corrupted. As far as I can tell second hand market is only a big deal for stores like Gamestop since they can buy something for $1 from you and turn it around and sell it for $10, which is more profit than what they get from selling a brand new game.

[Shrinweck]

Another issue about second hand sales is the developers/publishers don't see a dime, which hurts their revenue and eventually takes a toll on quality I would imagine. I'd look up some statistics for second hand sales hurting developers but I gotta go to work in like 5 minutes so I'm going to be lazy.

[Don]

Well obviously any developer would rather you buy a game at 75% off from Steam for $12 than $15 used from Gameshop since they at least get some of that $12 versus none of the $15. Before digital distribution become popular developers can't just call up Gameshop and tell them to sell the game for $10 for the next 2 days even if they wanted to, but now they have the option I don't see how getting an unused (loosely) copy for less than what it'd cost to buy used is a bad thing.

[Zeus]

Another issue about second hand sales is the developers/publishers don't see a dime, which hurts their revenue and eventually takes a toll on quality I would imagine. I'd look up some statistics for second hand sales hurting developers but I gotta go to work in like 5 minutes so I'm going to be lazy.

That's the PR line they're shoving nowadays. If they make a game people want or price it right, it sells. Look at CoD, they have ZERO issues selling way too many copies at $60. Same with Halo or Red Dead or GTA. Or all those Nintendo games that sell for 5 years at full price. Batman and Borderlands sold like mad 'cause they were perceived to be an excellent deal (and they were). Katamari 1 took off 'cause it was priced right.

The reason used sales are so strong is 'cause the games are simply overpriced / undervalued 95% of the time. Start up some tiered pricing and budget accordingly and you will dampen the used sales big time.

[Zeus]

Basically all the options and advantages you named don't hold any value to me and since I tend to be fairly picky about the games I play I'm hardly breaking the bank with my game purchasing habits. Five is the number of clicks it takes for me to purchase a game off steam and a couple hours later I can be playing it. For someone without a car that's enough of an advantage alone for me to stick with digital delivery. Oh, and since the Valve/Steam offices are located in WA (or something like that) I don't have to pay taxes.

Second hand games have never been something I've been interested in unless the game is too old to be sold new without it being overpriced as a collector's item or whatever.

And you can just as easily buy it online and have it delivered day 1 or off of Ebay / Kijiji and have it at far less than new price. Selling too.

It's really more of a preference on your part as opposed to an advantage for digital downloads.

Don, I already included the whole "price it right to account for lesser value" caveat in there. The argument is: for the same price, what would be better? Kup was sayin' "digital 'cause I don't want clutter" and I was countering that argument

[Don]

For the same price I'd take the digital option because I've a tendency to misplace my CDs, and even if not it's annoying to swap a CD in and out whether it's on your PC or a console. Now if the game doesn't require the CD to play I'd probably prefer having a tangible object, but there are very few games that are like due to piracy concerns. And if the box is going to come with a DVD and a single sheet of paper that says 'The manual is on this website' I think even there I'd stick with the digital option. I like my colored manuals but they seem to be going extinct.

[Zeus]

For the same price I'd take the digital option because I've a tendency to misplace my CDs, and even if not it's annoying to swap a CD in and out whether it's on your PC or a console. Now if the game doesn't require the CD to play I'd probably prefer having a tangible object, but there are very few games that are like due to piracy concerns. And if the box is going to come with a DVD and a single sheet of paper that says 'The manual is on this website' I think even there I'd stick with the digital option. I like my colored manuals but they seem to be going extinct.

So, instead of just getting into the habit of having the disc either in the system or in the case, which would leave you with all the options I put above, you'll just pay the same price for the non-recoverable, non-mobile digital download? Sorry to be a bit of an ass, but isn't that just silly and really wasting money?

[Eric]

Err most digital download services allow you to re-download any game after purchase.

[Zeus]

Err most digital download services allow you to re-download any game after purchase.

Non-recoverable is referring to the money spent, not being able to get the game again

[Kupek]

I don't re-sell games, and I don't buy enough for it to make a significant difference in my budget. (I've purchased two games in 2010: DQ9 and FF: 4 Warriors of Light. I am still playing both.)

I did not buy Chrono Trigger so that I could put it in my closet and have a secure feeling in knowing I owned it. I bought it to play it; I started playing it the day I got it in the mail.

I recently bought an iPod to be used almost exclusively in my car. The only place I need CDs to listen to music or talk shows is in my car; it's one of the reasons I haven't downloaded any music. I finally decided I was fed up with accumulating physical discs and their packaging material. There is real value to me in not having to deal with a physical object. Clutter does not bother you because, I believe, you inherently value having the physical object. I could discuss that further, but I would just be repeating many of the points made in this essay: Stuff.

Regarding time, it's not just the time to do a task. It's knowing I have a chore to do (and I would see it as a chore). I'd rather avoid a situation where I have yet another thing to do, no matter how little time it takes.

[Zeus]

I'm sure you bought Chrono to play not keep around. I meant as a game you wanted to hold on to long-term.

So I get this right: since you're the type of person who doesn't buy games he doesn't intent to keep long-term (ie. just to play through then get rid of), doesn't really rent games, never trades in his stuff, and never really lets anyone borrow his stuff or trade with others for something else to play short-term, you feel that none of the advantages of having the physical disc that I described above apply to you. As such, none of these possible options have have greater than zero value to you now or in the future and since they take up "clutter" (my personal value as a collector placed on the physical object has never entered this argument in any way; I was looking at it from a purely cost-benefit point of view) and actually represent in one way or another (ie. to store, move around, or to sell) a chore, you actually place a greater value on the digital download. Am I correct?

[Shrinweck]

It hasn't been mentioned but it should be noted that you obviously care a lot about item collection based on previous threads, and hey, even your current avatar.

Oh, and about non-mobility, there is a digital distribution service that lets you basically sell back your rights to the game to the service and then you receive 'in store' credit. It might be Impulse.

Also day one ordering tends to either be more expensive or has me paying tax again. And I already said I don't buy second hand so no to the auctioning and trading services once again.

[Don]

I remember seeing a presentation from a guy from NYT (Thomas Friedman?) that says self storage is a huge business because we have more things than we know what to do with, which is supposed to be an anomaly. It certainly makes sense.

[Kupek]

Chrono Trigger is a game I have and will continue to replay. I'm less likely to replay newer games because there's no nostalgia associated with them. For the record, I would let people borrow my games, but most of the people I know who play videogames don't play the ones I do. I lend out my books all the time - and books is a different discussion for me because the specifics are different.

Other than that, what you said is accurate.

[Zeus]

Chrono Trigger is a game I have and will continue to replay. I'm less likely to replay newer games because there's no nostalgia associated with them. For the record, I would let people borrow my games, but most of the people I know who play videogames don't play the ones I do. I lend out my books all the time - and books is a different discussion for me because the specifics are different.

Other than that, what you said is accurate.

Then, from someone who used to own a games store and spends a lot of time visiting a friend who manages one and occasionally helping him out, you are very much in the minority. Very, very, very few people place zero value on all that stuff. One or two, maybe, but certainly not all. Particularly considering the current economic state and the high price of games (although the games themselves haven't increased in price in 25 years, they're still expensive; on a side note, it's the fact that the prices haven't gone up but development costs have skyrocket that leads to the industry erroneously thinking of used games as the plague eroding the industry).

This is why digital download are and continue to be a relatively small portion of the overall market. Hell, the majority of games don't even come out digital yet. Most people place a relatively decent amount of value in the things I mentioned. People still rent games regularly, kids still trade games, lot of people who play games wanna play more than they can really afford so very much value the multi-billion dollar used market. Hell, look at EB/Gamestop and the deals they put out there to get used games into their stores. That's the lifeline of the retail market. They couldn't survive one new sales alone, regardless of volume.

Up here in Canada, there was a lot of talk about cash being minimized once Interac came out. Canada, unlike the US and most of the world, has very much jumped on board with the whole idea of a cashless society. We probably have far more adoption per capita than any other nation. But you know what? Lots of people (under-the-table workers excluded) still place a lot of value in the physical cash over some number on a computer printout (think of cash as a product for a second). Even in that industry where you can pay zero fees to use Interac and internet banking, people still place a lot of value on cash. And that's with the risk of theft or loss always there, even if very small. It's because it feels like you actually have something as opposed to just a number on a screen. That's why cash is still very prominent. Don't underestimate the value a very large portion of the population places on that.

Now, the gaming industry is unlike the banking industry in that the value proposition is severely diminished for the virtual version of the product. So, unlike the banking industry which saw a very large adoption rate even early on and is still very strong, we're not seeing that in the gaming industry to nearly that level. And I'm personally guessing that we never will until the industry wises up and starts accounting for the large disparity in the value proposition.