"Outrage Over Kingdoms of Amalur Content Lock Brings Studio Head Out To Debate"

[kane_magus]

Well.

It is basically the Batman Arkham City thing all over again.

Fortunately for me, in the case of this Kingdoms of Amalur game, I already had little interest in it. Now, I have none whatsoever.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, and I'll say it right now: Where did this relatively new idea that game developers/publishers have any right to profit from used game sales come from? They do not[1] and I can't wrap my head around why they've started to delude themselves into thinking that they do. No other industry that I'm aware of has this problem. Seriously, why do people in the game industry feel like they're such special snowflakes? And they have the gall to say that it is the gamers who are the self-entitled ones. Sheesh. The worst part is that the very gamers that are getting bitten in the ass with this stuff are starting to fall for it as well, starting to believe that the game companies are actually somehow in the right here. Really, just look at any given "debate" over this stuff that occurs in the comments sections of any article talking about it, such as here. What is wrong with people?

[1] - Or at least, they should not, but thanks to EULAs the situations becomes murkier. This is yet another reason that I believe that these increasingly crappy EULAs that are shoehorned into software and forced to be "accepted" before the software can be used are a blight on the software industry in general and the video game industry in particular.

Comments

[owsf2000.livejournal.com]

The whole EULA thing is, imo, the result of a bad verdict in a US court as well. A ruling that agreed with software companies that since the program had to be "copied" into ram, it would be copyright infringement unless a license was obtained - thus the EULA... "to protect the customer".

A faulty premise resulting in a horrible result. Put simply copying to one's ram to run a program that can ONLY BE RUN FROM RAM TO BEGIN WITH (And is intended to be run thusly by the rights holder.) should not need any kind of license.

And even then, when it comes to consoles it still doesn't make any point even along those lines since even if you install the program on your PS3/360, it's not like you can run it without the original disc in the drive. You get rid of the disc, and the installed info becomes meaningless.

[hikarugenji.livejournal.com]

As that article says, I think a large part of the game companies' frustration is over stuff like this:


I'm pretty sure that if the used game market were limited to Ebay, flea markets, and stuff like that the game companies might not be as eager to kill the used game market. I don't like what the companies are doing, but I think that Gamespot is partly to blame.

[owsf2000.livejournal.com]

I've mentioned it in various forms, but yes, Gamestop is to blame for quite a bit of it. To recap from my last LJ entry:

From your ad above, you as a gamer have two choices. Buy new, for (rounded) 60 bucks, or used for 55 - but wait! you get an extra 10% or more off for using your gamers card!

In both cases you typically get the SAME quality product. Something that's been opened and subjected to lord knows what. Assuming of course the cashier even remembers to put the disc back in the case before sealing it. (They've failed at this in the past!)

On both cases, you can get insurance for an extra 3-4 bucks in case anything goes wrong. I think they charge more for insurance on something that's "new" (gutted, but "new")

Given that I can see why some people would buy it used if possible. Much cheaper overall than just 5 dollars and the quality is the same.

In the end however it's still the gamers themselves that are buying it at that price. If they didn't, Gamestop would not be able to sell them and would drop the price for used. (They would have to, if nobody was buying it. But people ARE.)

One big part of the blame is that Gamestop (And increasingly other retailers) are manhandling the new games.

[kane-magus.livejournal.com]

In the end however it's still the gamers themselves that are buying it at that price. If they didn't, Gamestop would not be able to sell them and would drop the price for used. (They would have to, if nobody was buying it. But people ARE.)

This, in a nutshell.

If all the gamers who are upset over Gamestop doing this would, you know, stop buying games from and selling games to Gamestop, then Gamestop would go out of business, or at least have to change their business model.

The problem is, however, most gamers simply don't care.

For what it's worth, I haven't bought a game, new or used, from Gamestop myself since I got LittleBigPlanet for the PS3 around two years ago, (http://kane-magus.livejournal.com/310934.html) which I bought new, rather than used (mostly because I'd had (http://kane-magus.livejournal.com/97229.html) bad (http://kane-magus.livejournal.com/99221.html) luck (http://kane-magus.livejournal.com/183966.html) with their used games in the past and resolved not to buy used from them anymore). Though I suppose it's entirely possible that it was just a gutted then re-shrink-wrapped copy (i.e. a USED copy) and I wasn't aware of it.

[kane-magus.livejournal.com]

Except that they're not responding to this by punishing Gamestop. In some cases they are even still actively and willfully working with Gamestop (http://kotaku.com/5849828/dont-fret-used-gamers-gamestop-has-catwoman-codes-for-preowned-arkham-city-purchasers), despite the fact that, as you point out there, Gamestop is one of the main problems.

Instead, they are responding to this by guilting/scaring gamers as a whole into buying new, and completely screwing them over if they don't, whether they buy it at Gamestop (unless Gamestop has a deal with them, as above) or at a flea market or wherever.