Crytek: Schemes to strike second-hand games biz 'awesome'
Cult games developer Crytek this week shouted its support for next-gen consoles that take means to prevent second-hand games being played, calling such a prospect "absolutely awesome". No shizzle, Sherlock. It would say that, wouldn't it? The sentiments follow recent rumours that Sony and Microsoft's upcoming console releases …
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Re: thats my buying power minimised then
surely they do pay to play it too when they stump up increasing amounts for the downloadable content....
was thinking that if you pay full price for the game then yes you should have unrestricted access to the mulitplayer (and additional content??) but if you get the game 2nd hand you are given the choice for paying to access the multiplayer aspect or micro payments to avoid getting an old game being charged a tenner and then finding out the servers are going offline in a couple of months.. helps the devs with keeping their servers full more often, creates the revenue stream so they don't feel they are loseing out in 2nd hand sales and allows people like me to get a 2nd hand game finish teh single player and move on to the next game..
Re: thats my buying power minimised then @Citizen Kaned
PSN is free
Re: thats my buying power minimised then @Citizen Kaned
Fair enough, I retract Sony from my previous statement. The point is still valid for Xbox Live Gold though.
Zero sum game
Even if the games and media companies manage to eliminate "piracy" and second-hand sales completely they won't be getting a windfall. There's only so much disposable income to go around.
If we have to buy everything at full price most people aren't suddenly going to find 10x the cash to spend on games and media, we'll just get less of it. Actually we may spend less as well, since we'll feel more like we're being ripped off.
Lost cause, anyway.
Record companies, software companies, games publishers all seem to follow the same flawed reasoning : that every illegaly played copy will convert to a paid copy if the means of playing it illegally is removed.
Secondly they seem to take no responsibility whatsoever in getting their product to the user.
In the case of Crytek, I pre-orderd the Nano edition frome one of their 'distributors' only to find out 3 weeks after launch they were not going to deliver the product because of 'unavailability'. Because they had already separated me from my funds I was offered a 'voucher' for another product. Crytek didn't want to know. Only after enlisting the aid of the legal profession I was reimbursed.
I've bought games on Steam that were defective. Steam, who had taken my money, blankly refused to refund or repair the defective game because they're only the distributor (as they see it). If you persist and vent your frustration on their forums your account is likely to be closed, and you will loose the possibility to play EVERY game you've bought from them, without a refund.
It is the release of terminally flawed software, dismal support and crooked distributors 'EA anyone ?) that is causing people to refuse to pay 50 to 70 Euros for a game instead of waiting to pick it up for a fiver second hand or wait untill it becomes EOL, and NOT the inherent criminal intent of gamers.
As long as they don't understand that they're doomend. And rightfully so.
You bought defective games on Steam ?
Could you list them ?
Because that never happened to me.
Re: You bought defective games on Steam ?
Great logic there!
On the same note: I've never been hit by a car, therefore noone ever gets hit by cars.
QED
Re: You bought defective games on Steam ?
Yes, I can list them. But how, exactly, is that relevant to this story ? Or to the fact they do not work properly ? If I tell you will you fix them for me ?
Re: You bought defective games on Steam ?
Yet the list of purchased defective games still has no entries AC, so I'd say his lOgic is sound when you read the whole post, not take careful chunck to make a Staw man.
Re: Yes, I can list them.
Oh, it's totally off-topic of course, I'm not denying that at all. But mentioning Steam doesn't seem so on-topic to me either. Not that I'm complaining.
If I ask, it is because I am genuinely interested. My Steam library includes over 50 titles, and I've never had any serious issue with any of them at all.
So I am looking forward to your list of defective games, to see if I somehow avoided the bad apples.
It Strikes me...
... that they want to reduce the use of borrowed or second hand games and at the same time reduce piracy.
Simple solution is not to ban or otherwise engineer out second hand or borrowed games but to reduce the cost of buying the game brand new.
In the good old days (I'm talking about the 80's and ealry 90's) games cost around £10-£15. Everybody could afford to buy the game new. Ok I know piracy still happened but not on the scale it does not.
Alright modern production costs for developing games is vastly more than the old days but not everybody can afford between £30-£50 for a game. Thats why some people borrow games or wait for them to be available second hand. And many more pirate games.
Time for the industry to grow a set of balls and try selling games at half the price. They may be surprised at the outcome. Personally I feel that their revenue would increase as those who borrow or buy second hand would start buying new, less piracy would occur due to games being more affordable.
Piracy will never be stamped out as there are always those out there who want something for nothing.
Personally the cost of games put me off investing in a modern console. I'll stick with my Retro computers for retro gaming, my PS2 for other gaming and my PC for the latest stuff when I can afford it.
Re: It Strikes me...
In the late 80s/early 90s the cost of pre-PC/PC games rose "due to piracy" - because they were distributed on 3.5" floppies. Uhuh.
Then came the CD drive. Very rapidly became ubiquitous in machines. CD writers cost thousands of quid and were stand-alone units. Casual piracy didn't happen.
Did the price of games fall? Did they bollox.
Then they went up again "due to piracy" because people had CD writers. Uhuh.
Rinse/repeat from tape to DVD, same old crap coming from publishers.
It's all a load of bollox. Piracy can't be eradicated and was never the problem anyway. Now the "bogeyman" is legitimate customers selling second-hand games.
Give me a fucking break. Nobody believes this horseshit anymore guys. You just want to keep selling the same product to the same customer every time it format-shifts or equipment dies.
Long-term you are going to have to make the product cheap enough or ubiquitous enough so that the average punter won't consider piracy. If you can't make it cheap then you damn well better not tie it to a device.
Tying the game to a single device while NOT reducing the price is unlikely to achieve anything other than a large increase in the number of people saying "fuck you" to the publishers.
Will be amusing to watch.
Hmmmmmm
It is a small anomaly that some software is sold as "owned" and some as "licenced". You don't see companies going down to CeX to trade-in their old copies of SAP, MSOffice, WindowsXP etc so why should Joe Public be able to resell his old copy of a game he's finished / doesn't like 'cos it's crap / hasn't played for 2 years then? However as long as computer games have existed we have had that right and we are generally more than a little aggrieved that they are proposing to take it away from us. Downsides of this proposal are that once a game is out of production you won't be able to get it anymore, and I'm sure that there will be unscrupulous persons who will find ways to side-step these measures as they have done with all previous attempts to prevent people from copying software. Pirates won't buy more software, they'll either find ways round the protection or just go and play something else.
Re: Hmmmmmm
because my win7 disk will be used for years, as will an office disk. unlike a game that might have a 7 hour SP campaign. 7 hours for £50 isnt that great when im paying for the console, premises, leccy and seating etc.
I'm on their side *ducks*
Well, I'm sort of on the side of the publishers here. I don't buy pre-owned games, just because theyr'e a freakin' rip off. I buy a game new for £50, I complete it in a week, I then sel it on for £20, only to see it back on sale for £48, even though its missing the £10 worth of DLC.
But because people are idiots they'll still buy the pre-owned version. Its partly the developers fault, they're releasing re-hashed shit which you complete in a day and then trade in. It isn't such a big thing with DVDs, or books, when was the last tiem you traded in a DVD, or a book. In my case never, a dvd has replay value as does a book (bad wording I know) games... well modern games anyway, do not. And considering a lot are play oonce and cost 3* the price of a dvd well...
That's why I'm behind the idea of cutting out second hand, it does damage the industry. BUT if I don't see a price drop as a result of this, and a gradual price drop of new games then screw them. I would buy all my PS3 games through their online shop if only the prices werent jacked up so high. (about £10 more than in stores, and the price doesn't drop for ages)
If they're cutting out the pre-owned pie, then they damn well better pass some of the savings to us, they won't but I wish they would. If they don't then Nintendo, the only compnay not reported to be implementing DRM will just steal more of a market share.
If they lower the price because there's no pre-owned market, meaning sony / microsoft and the publishers get more sales overall, then that'll knock Ninty out of the water because they'll be undercutting them with the same games.
Re: I'm on their side *ducks*
You cannot be serious?! You actually hold out hope that the price will drop?? Damn that led to a good laugh followed by a "wait, that was serious?"
Re: I'm on their side *ducks*
where do you see your 2nd hand games? i see loads for £10-15.
of course they will not reduce the price. all they will see is a big decline in SP games unless they offer good value for money like fallout games or games you play a lot like Fifa
who will pay £50 for a game that lasts 7 hours and then you are stuck with it.
i also get annoyed at PSN pricing. its always RRP and more expensive than shops where i resell my disk or trade it in.
the EU need to stop this. they poke their noses into enough things, what about consumer rights?!?
Re: Re: I'm on their side *ducks*
You actually hold out hope that the price will drop??
Definitely this. Anyone who thinks this will lead to a price drop is very, very naive indeed. If anything, this will encourage prices upwards AND keep them higher for longer. I mean, why would they want to drop prices when there is no other way of getting the product? Take away the second hand market, you take away the directly competing products with the lower prices, you take away any incentive the publisher has to bring their prices down.
In the long run, this will benefit no-one, not even the publishers, see my previous point about getting in to a gaming series on the cheap and paying full price for later episodes.
Re: I'm on their side *ducks*
"That's why I'm behind the idea of cutting out second hand, it does damage the industry."
Damage the industry? If anything it's a good thing for it. Less well off gamers have the ability to buy games they couldn't otherwise afford and will likely get hooked on whatever dreary brown FPS is flavour of the month and will probably spurt out on the full price for the sequel at launch. Without the second-hand market, they'd be pirating that game wholesale - wanna bet which of those two options really dose damage the industry?
Second hand house sale damage the building industry dude! It's true, Paris told me so!
Re: I'm on their side *ducks*
Isn't there ALWAYS an incentive: that of drawing more buyers? Unless they believe themselves to be like Apple, whose products might as well be made of gold and will draw fervent buyers to swarm like zombies to get your new game on the first day, regardless if it's the same drivel repeated for the umpteenth time ("We must have it. Here's our life savings...").
Re: I'm on their side *ducks*
Better be careful. The construction industry may take that to heart and start insisting on more construction projects where they're not needed. After all, how else do you keep builders working if they're not...well, building.
But back to the argument at hand. I realize that the problem is not as black-and-white as the two sides have us believe. The thing about physical products is that they're normally hard to replicate (but not impossible--the knock-off industry proves that), so if you buy one of a physical object you're not likely to use it as a template to replicate a dozen more and sell each one off. So essentially each individual instance of an item is unique. You can keep it, trade it, or destroy it, but it's still just ONE. You're not like the manufacturer who can make more of them.
With virtual goods like games and e-books, that barrier is gone just like that. Computers are pure whizzes at duplicating bits, and since bits are the only thing computers can understand, that makes it difficult to really attach uniqueness to anything. Unlike in the physical world, replication of virtual goods is TOO easy.
The publishers DO have a point in that they want to be the ones to control the "manufacture" of their goods. They're just taking very stupid, heavy-handed approaches to it. And since they feel they're at cliff's-edge, they feel they're under existential threat; and you can't compromise under duress. So no one's happy.
What the industry probably needs is an alternate approach to the problem. If trying to enforce copyright in a virtual world (where copies are too easy to replicate, merge, and make impossible to track) is unreasonable, then perhaps someone should propose an alternate system that still allows for the basic economic model (makers get proper compensation for their efforts, customers are not unduly burdened) to still work.
Missing the mark
I think the simple point he misses is that a console is an appliance. I do not truly install software to it. I run a program from a disk on it. This is a far different thing, than say Windows or Photoshop, and it should be treated differently as such.
Though this is no different than watching a movie in a player of some sort, this will only serve to have the MPAA and RIAA jump in to "protect the artists" even more fervently.
Look at Steam
This is a prime example of how to do this and get it right. You can't trade your old Steam games, but does anyone cry out about it? Nope. Why? Because it's cheap. I'll be they're rubbing their hands with glee at the moment with the number of people outraged by this news and considering moving to PC for gaming.
Expect foot in mouth, cringing U-Turn apology in three...two...
.....you know the score.
Games are different
"It's weird that [second-hand] is still allowed because it doesn't work like that in any other software industries,"
Well when I've worked out how to use (for example) MS Office I don't put it back in the box and never use it again, it is a program in continuous (if occasional) use. A game however once played and mastered will generally get deleted.
I don't think it takes much brains to see they have different patterns of use so different marketing models are valid.
If they really want to kill the second hand market, all they need to do is drop the new price to a level that makes piracy and reselling not worth the bother.
Its time to ban Second Hand Housing
Forget this nickel-and-dime nonsense. its time to go after the big ticket items: Second Hand houses and second hand cars. Imagine the effect on unemployment if all houses had to be purchased new!
The % game
Most of my friends will consider the value of a game the % of the value they can reimburse it for later.
let's say If they know they can get £15 for a game, they don't mind paying £40 for it, roughly 2.5x the price.
Now, if they know they can only get £0 for it, 2.5x £0 is .... £0
Their perceived value of the game, and maximum price they'd be willing to pay for the game becomes £0
and that means they'll just start pirating stuff instead.
Well done industry, in your blind ideals you're just going to convert legitimate customers into pirates.
Re: The % game
Strange logic, perhaps they should look at the £25 instead.
He won't get my cash
... the games I've bought lately have all been from the Humble Indie Bundle, where I paid the average Linux rate. Interestingly, the last figures I read stated that the average Linux customer paid 15, the average Microsoft user paid 7 and the average apple user was in between those figures. Whether that was £ or $, I can't remember.
But I haven't bought a "big ticket" game for ... I can't remember how long, now.
As far as I recall, you can pass on your steam titles to someone else, but that was some years ago. Since ditching Windows for Linux I haven't really bothered with Steam. I just keep a Windows machine for Lineage 2, and even that is now not supported by NCSoft.
The games on HIB have actually held my interest more than many of the mainstream titles for some time now; I've played Darwinia a few times over.
IMHO, these big house are only alienating me more and more. They can keep their titles, I'm happy enough without them. There are plenty of good alternatives out there. I'm currently playing Minecraft, and I'm enjoying it very much indeed and getting considerable value for money.
Sorry but all this, being unable to play when the live systems crash, having to be on line, having your account terminated and Microsoft won't say why (Watchdog had to intervene in that one and when they made the national news, MS backed down) and the restriction on second hand games ... sorry but all they're doing is turning me to the indie competition more and more.
Re: He won't get my cash
Yes, I'm aware that even though i'm running my own Minecraft server, I still have to be connected to authenticate to Mojang's server, and that does annoy me, but so far they haven't let me down, and I know there are ways around it, out there, if it all goes pete tong. I've paid my money. (and it wasn't a fortune, either) With the massive amount of mods and bundles (I'm currently enjoying the Tekkit flavour) I'll be happy for a long time to come.
All the big bully boys get from me is the middle finger.
Re: He won't get my cash
+1 for L2, though the glory days of Teon are far behind us!
I keep a Windows host for steam usage. I've bought loads of stuff I've never played - get it in the sales for a "rainy day" at £2.50.
The Valve games are worth the windows host, though I could run those on OSX. CoD was great upto Modern Warfare. $25 for the lot if I remember. However, BlOps was boring... never again. Bethesda is PNG due to price gouging.
The indie market is definitely the place for innovation. Frozen Synapse, World of Goo, Limbo all have great gameplay and because they focused on gameplay rather than scenery, they do well.
The problem isn't piracy or the 2nd hand market, the problem is producing games which are re-skinned versions of previous games. Higher-res textures does not a new game make. Portal 2 looks pretty much like Portal 1, but it added new mechanics (to a game based on mechanics) and more fun with a sideline of humour and acting. So it works and wasn't grossly overpriced. Tweaking what an RPG does in an FPS doesn't make it a new game. Relying on the community to make multiplayer fun is not value that the publisher is adding, though running the servers may be. If the SP version of a game is rubbish, but the MP is great, sell it cheap and price up the online subscriptions, then people won't feel ripped off.
typical money grabbing
sure the games industry is expensive to run
Then again, the industry as a whole makes more than the movie industry.
But which is best........there's only one way to find out
FIGHT!!!!!!!
Presumably you're an idiot
"Presumably, he'd also like second-hand books and DVDs banned too. Maybe even clothing, while he's at it."
Clearly, from what he's said, he doesn't give a shit about those other markets, since he doesn't develop in those markets. This is about what's good for Crytek, not what's good for Paramount or Gucci. But nice try on the whole "if someone thinks A they must necessarily think B and C too" strawman bullshit.
Re: Presumably you're an idiot
Presumably you're an idiot. There are (generally) two reasons why people have opinions such as this:
1) they think it's the right thing to do.
2) they think it will help them.
If 1), then he should also want to ban charity shops, as the OP points out. If 2), then this should be reported under the headline "Pope is Catholic: in other news, capitalist fucker wants to make even more money, and looks for excuse to not appear to look like a capitalist fucker".
Re: Presumably you're an idiot
And this is why you'll never see cures come from private medical industry.
The other reason ....
... we like the 2nd hand market and they don't is that , in that market, price reflects quality. They would like to continue to release all games at the same 50-60 price point even though some of them are vastly inferior to others.
Am I the only one who can differentiate physical and virtual goods?!?!
To be honest I think the current way that's gaining traction as the way forward for everyone - online passes.
A new game includes the online pass by default, but there's nothing stopping the owner then selling on the physical disc (which these days carries the single player/offline content).
If the 2nd-hand purchaser wants to play online then they CHOOSE to buy an online pass - with the money (minus costs) going to the developer. If they CHOOSE NOT TO play then they still have the SP/offline game on the disc to play (and sell on themselves).
There seems to be a sense of entitlement amongst gamers that just because the PHYSICAL goods can be traded on then so can the VIRTUAL goods. Why?!?! In the oft-mentioned example of car sales then the physical good being traded on is the car, while the virtual good (which subsequent purchasers CHOOSE to buy or not) is the servicing, warranty etc etc.
Of course if the next-gen consoles go DL only then all bets are off!
Re: Am I the only one who can differentiate physical and virtual goods?!?!
I don't think that anyone is arguing that online services should be free. They have an ongoing cost to supply.
The main thrust of the discussion I think is about ownership of the originally purchased media and the ability to sell it on.
oh wait I just realized this banning of second hand sales would mostly harm console gaming
carry on then
If 100000 people
buy the game, then 100000 play online,then sell it and 100000 peeps buy it second hand, whats the fucking difference??
Bring on the pirates.....
Re: If 100000 people
The original owners statistics will still be there and stored, I can see the point in online passes, but if I bought a S/H game requiring them, either supply it or sell it to me cheap.
BTW Game SH prices are ridiculous.
Anthing under £15 is OK, paid £2.50 for a PS game
I could have sworn it was piracy that was destroying gaming - and all the time it turned out to be second-hand games.
The problem modern gaming has is simple....
....it's not piracy, it's not the second hand market. It's an ever dwindling level of originality.
what percentage of releases each year are just version 3, 4 or 13 of a previous release? 80% or more?
The gameplay for many games hasn't changed since the 8bit days 30+ years ago. All that's really changed is the polygon count, the colour depth and masses of pointless FMV. Oh and less and less quality playing time till it's finished. I couldn't imagine playing a game on my Spectrum that would only deliver about 12 hours of game time till it was complete. A £5 game would last you several weeks.
The market will only tolerate paying £40-£50 a time for the same old thing so many times. Maybe we have reached that point?
This again?
There's a reason I didn't purchase Crysis 2; It wasn't very enjoyable.
Same reason I didn't purchase Crysis 1, although I really have tried to get into it on at least 3 occasions.
I buy good games. Games like Grimrock, Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet and Superbrothers: Sword & Sorcery EP.
1.Make good games
2.Market them well
3.Engage with fans
4.????
5.PROFIT!
No kidding !
"It's weird that 2nd-hand is still allowed because it doesn't work like that in any other software industries"
Yeah, well you're in the entertainment industry, moron. People have been selling their discs and books since the first ones got off the printer. Why should you get special treatment ?
Once again, someone is confusing the ability to impose restriction with the right to do so.
Well that does it for me. I am never buying another Crytek title again. And, for your information Mr. Hojengaard, I don't play pirated games, I buy my games. I don't see how it matters if I buy them second-hand (not that I do, actually).
So we're both going to be happy, Mr. Hojengaard. You're never going to see my money, second-hand or otherwise, and apparently you won't regret it.
Neither will I.
Its Real Simple
I have two 360's in my house
My son has one
I have one
We share our games
IF ITS GOOD ENOUGH we buy two copies so we can play online togeather Ie all of Halo series.
If its crap like most software (50+ games and the only double copies are Halo) we only buy one
Now mr F&^K T&^D game developer why should i have to pay twice to use your game on either of my consoles one at a time.
What a bunch of F*&^ing wankers.
second hand software not allowed in any other industry?
I call shenanigans, to put it politely.
The running cost argument is bollocks
How is keeping servers running for second-hand games any different from keeping them running for original owners? Sure most "sellers" would not be playing the game much (or they wouldn't be selling it) but there's always going to be some who linger on. Thus meaning servers are needed anyway!
And just about the entire problem here can be solved by going from the now ubiquitous publisher-run servers to the olden days of dedicated servers users can run themselves. Thus nothing would stop the developer from saying: okay guys, been enough, servers and support is going down next month.
Instead of developing a shit game that can be played through in 5 hours and has no real replay value, develop a game that actually takes time to finish and can be played through loads of times without getting stale.
This could eventually kill retro-gaming
Like many of you here probably have, I grew up with the Atari VCS and the original Nintendo Entertainment System. However, as fortunate as I was to be able to have those two game systems, I had many friends who had other systems, such as the Intellivision, the Turbo Grafix 16, the Atari Jaguar, the Sega Genesis, etc. I would go over to my friends' houses and play games with them on those other systems, and I find myself loving a particular game and wishing that I could have that other game system just so that I could play that game. However, at the time when those game systems were new they were also pricey, and after my parents had just bought me my NES how could I go to them and suddenly ask for a Sega Master System, an Atari 7800, and a Turbo Grafix 16 too? I couldn't-- we didn't have that kind of money and my having the gall to ask for something like that would have sent them through the roof!
Luckily, thanks to the second-hand game market I can now try all of those games and systems that I never was able to own when I was younger. Even as late as the early 2000's my house was an XBox house, which meant that I never got to play any of the neat-looking games that were only available on the Nintendo GameCube or the Sony Playstation 2. As a result, when I saw a used Nintendo GameCube with a controller on sale for $15 on a dealer's table at a classic gaming convention some months ago I jumped at the chance to pick it up. I've been wanting to try both Starfox Adventures and Starfox Assault for about a decade at that point, and now I finally had the chance to do so and I wasn't killing my bank account in the process. If there was no second-hand gaming market, how could I ever do this?
The sad fact is that if the game console creators and the game software developers find a way to block the sale of second-hand games, eventually the pastime of retro-gaming will cease to exist for future gaming consoles. Imagine if they had pulled this kind of crap with all of the classic Atari, Nintendo, Sega, Sony, etc. systems 15 to 30-years ago? Nobody would be able to pick them up and play them now! Entire generations of classic games, from the original Missile Command to the very first Super Mario Brothers would be lost and unplayable to new generations of gamers. That's what is going to happen if they implement anti-secondhand market measures now-- in 15 to 30 years time no one will be able to play the favorite games of today any longer because the second-hand market for them will cease to exist.
I realize that today's game console makers and game development companies only care about what their bottom line is going to be during the next fiscal quarter, but I think that they will be hobbling interest in gaming in the long run if they kill the second-hand market. How will they get new generations of people hooked on gaming if they kill-off the cheap "gateway drug" that is second-hand games and second-hand systems? Someone playing a second-hand game or console may love playing it so much that they will eventually shell out for the current generation product. The game companies ought to think a little bit harder about that, as they may find that all of the cost cutting, price raising, anti second-hand market, and anti-piracy tactics in the world will be for naught if they erode their own customer base in the process.
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