Developers view old used games as similar to piracy

[eightbit]

I will never buy a game that needs a "digital pass" to play.

I will never buy a game that I cannot someday trade or sell away.

 

I'm sticking to classic gaming and used and homebrew game purchases. "F" them!

[Greg2600]

Obviously I disagree with the stance of the developers. You're budget should be based on selling the game once, not multiple times per copy.

 

As an aside, this is really strange, but the photo of the cat and the SNES was pulled from the flickr site of my friend Rob! I wonder if he knows this author?

[ComputerSpaceFan]

Bad news folks, it looks like the courts agree with developers...

 

From this article:

 

publishers have long been seeking ways to cripple the used games market and now it seems that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has provided them with a hand-crafted ruling on a silver platter

 

"We hold today that a software user is a licensee rather than an owner of a copy where the copyright owner (1) specifies that the user is granted a license; (2) significantly restricts the user’s ability to transfer the software; and (3) imposes notable use restrictions,"

 

EULAs effectively supercede ownership rights, which may mean that you don't own any of your video games, you're merely leasing them. Therefore, reselling used games could actually be an illegal act.

[atarian63]

Bad news folks, it looks like the courts agree with developers...

 

From this article:

 

publishers have long been seeking ways to cripple the used games market and now it seems that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has provided them with a hand-crafted ruling on a silver platter

 

"We hold today that a software user is a licensee rather than an owner of a copy where the copyright owner (1) specifies that the user is granted a license; (2) significantly restricts the user’s ability to transfer the software; and (3) imposes notable use restrictions,"

 

EULAs effectively supercede ownership rights, which may mean that you don't own any of your video games, you're merely leasing them. Therefore, reselling used games could actually be an illegal act.

9th circuit is often wrong and frequently overturned. That is the nuthouse circuit!

[4Ks]

Bad news folks, it looks like the courts agree with developers...

 

From this article:

 

publishers have long been seeking ways to cripple the used games market and now it seems that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has provided them with a hand-crafted ruling on a silver platter

 

"We hold today that a software user is a licensee rather than an owner of a copy where the copyright owner (1) specifies that the user is granted a license; (2) significantly restricts the user’s ability to transfer the software; and (3) imposes notable use restrictions,"

 

EULAs effectively supercede ownership rights, which may mean that you don't own any of your video games, you're merely leasing them. Therefore, reselling used games could actually be an illegal act.

 

So I guess that copy of Ratchet and Clank 2 I bought today makes me some kind of pirate?

[Reaperman]

maybe this is really good news.

 

if everybody really thinks used games are illegal anyway, I can think of many easier/cheaper/more efficient ways for me to steal these games.

I guess I've just been thinking about old games wrong all this time.

 

I sure hope the 'game police' don't come in and bust me for the closet full I have now. I don't think I can flush them fast enough. Hard disks full are much easier to stash.

Edited September 15, 2010 by Reaperman

[ledzep]

On the flip side of things, I want to say that another annoyance I've had with recent discussions on this and related issues is that companies such as Gamestop, Activision, THQ and whoever are not "greedy" for wanting to turn a profit. This is how they stay in business and pay their employees! It's also how they make the next line of games.

 

"Greed" is when a person spends too much of their money on things they don't need. Or it's when an empire gets too big for its britches. It's different when a company tries to "demand" more money because the real person in charge here is the customer. If the company sets too high a price, the customer won't pay, and the company will actually make less money than if they had lowered the price.

 

There's profit and then there's profit. No, a company isn't greedy simply by wanting to make a profit. How else to survive? But many companies out there are dumb and get greedy based on stupid ideas like "Hey, if we make X amount of dollars by charging Y for our stuff then we can make twice as much if we double the price!" and "Well, we were expecting to make a lot more than we're actually making so obviously we have to find a way to make those expectation reality instead of recognizing that those expectations were idiotic."

 

Also, "greedy" means basically wanting more than you need or can use. That includes profits. Ask BP, those retards got so greedy about money that they started cutting corners everywhere to save a million here and 3 million there and they basically made it inevitable that one of their rigs would fail and cost them billions. What for? What were those CEOs buying or saving up for? They couldn't possibly spend it all, it was bragging rights. Greed. And you're forgetting lawsuits and companies trying to get laws changed such that they can dictate how things are sold and owned. Like the idiotic concept that when you buy software you don't own it, only lease it. So they can tell you what you can and can't do with "their" software. That's greed. Wanting to sue some kid for millions of dollars because he "illegally" downloaded some MP3s (how does anybody even legally be allowed to care about a format as lossy as MP3?), like he could possibly pay them all that money or, more to the point, that those downloads were actually worth that much money. Yet if he borrowed that CD from someone and ripped his own MP3 copies nobody legally cares. Or companies getting laws passed to make DVD players have to show their stupid advertisements because they've convinced courts that advertising actually equals profits. Can they prove that? No. Yet that crap gets passed.

[Vic George 2K3]

Some companies aren't making a profit from used games because those companies are now dead.

[Rik]

I remember back in the early 90's when stores rented out PC games.PC games back then were on 5.25 and 3.5 inch floppies of course.They'd ask you how many days you wanted the game for, $3.99 a day or something like that.It just took you a couple minutes to copy onto your hard drive and you'd have the game till you deleted it.It was pretty silly to keep the game for days.I really don't know why they bothered with that.Was it considered piracy to copy a rented game back then?I made photo copies of instruction, and copy protect code sheets also, hey, they were included in the game box.

Edited September 15, 2010 by Rik

[yell0w_lantern]

I vote with my wallet. I don't buy these new-fangled videogames. The last modern videogame I bought was Freedom Force Versus the Third Reich in 2005.

[ComputerSpaceFan]

I would say to developers that they need to adopt a new model and allow us the freedom to choose the one we want. If I was in their shoes I would start moving toward a digital-download-only delivery method. That way they get every sale and any attempts at reselling or moving a copy is nullified. That would solve their problem, for a while.

 

As a gamer I would likely respond by not wanting to buy their goods anymore and instead availing myself to the huge back-catalog of physical media games sitting in bargain bins or on eBay / Craig's List.

 

It's like a reverse telling of the demise of record stores. For music tracks, people wanted digital downloads instead of paying for physical media, services such as iTunes rose to meet the new business model, and the old record stores went bankrupt. However in this case (or at least for me personally) the rise of something like On Live which arrives to meet the new business model will for me cause me to re-invest in the old physical media instead.

 

Just my two cents.

[Animan]

Why is everyone complaining?

 

"Oh god, video game companies are doing evil things to get my money!"

 

This has always been happening. You start arguing now?

 

Not trying to be rude, though. Yes, I hate this whole thing as much as the next guy, but I've come to accept it. It's not changing anytime soon.

[godslabrat]

Why is everyone complaining?

 

"Oh god, video game companies are doing evil things to get my money!"

 

This has always been happening. You start arguing now?

 

Not trying to be rude, though. Yes, I hate this whole thing as much as the next guy, but I've come to accept it. It's not changing anytime soon.

 

I think it's a little more complicated than that. Yes, there have been shady practices in the past, but we're now at a point where publishers are trying to stack the economics of the industry entirely in their favor. That's new. Before, there was at least this concept that every game purchase was a sale, and all sales were final. Both the customer and publisher left the table with something. Now, thanks to technology and different distribution methods, we're supposed to think that the publisher retains both our money AND their game.

 

It's not just a goof-of-the-week. This is a game changer, if anyone ever takes it seriously.

[jferio]

I think it's a little more complicated than that. Yes, there have been shady practices in the past, but we're now at a point where publishers are trying to stack the economics of the industry entirely in their favor. That's new. Before, there was at least this concept that every game purchase was a sale, and all sales were final. Both the customer and publisher left the table with something. Now, thanks to technology and different distribution methods, we're supposed to think that the publisher retains both our money AND their game.

 

It's not just a goof-of-the-week. This is a game changer, if anyone ever takes it seriously.

 

Oh, believe me, I plan on watching to see which game publishers take advantage of the 9th court ruling during the time that it's "in force", and add them to my personal "don't buy" list for just that reason. That list currently includes Sony and Electronic Arts. (I fully expect both of them to partake of this particular KoolAID, but they were already on my list.)

[atarian1]

I remember back in the early 90's when stores rented out PC games.PC games back then were on 5.25 and 3.5 inch floppies of course.They'd ask you how many days you wanted the game for, $3.99 a day or something like that.It just took you a couple minutes to copy onto your hard drive and you'd have the game till you deleted it.It was pretty silly to keep the game for days.I really don't know why they bothered with that.Was it considered piracy to copy a rented game back then?I made photo copies of instruction, and copy protect code sheets also, hey, they were included in the game box.

 

Really? That's not what I remember. In the early 80s, there were software rentals which were eventually made illegal due to the ease of copying floppies. I remember ads for software rentals suddenly gone after the law was passed. That lasted until CD-ROMs came along. I vividly remember renting PC CD-ROMs at my local video store (Blockbuster, etc), but not floppy media. Like I said, that was already illegal in the 90s.

 

Renting CD-ROMs back then was not big deal because hard drives were barely 1 GB (unless you were rich) standard. So if you pirated the CD-ROM by copying the contents to the hard drive, you could only squeeze in 1 or 2 games. Even with several GBs, you could only squeeze a handful of games on the hard drive. CD writers were well over $1K, so copying CD-ROMs was quite rare. Of course when big hard drives and CD writers dropped in price, the stores stopped renting CD-ROMs. Geez, wonder why?

[Mord]

It's like a reverse telling of the demise of record stores. For music tracks, people wanted digital downloads instead of paying for physical media, services such as iTunes rose to meet the new business model, and the old record stores went bankrupt. However in this case (or at least for me personally) the rise of something like On Live which arrives to meet the new business model will for me cause me to re-invest in the old physical media instead.

 

Digital downloads alone didn't kill off any music stores, although record companies regularly releasing CDs that had 1 or 2 good songs on it with the rest being crap certainly pushed a lot of people towards digital in that case.

 

The thing killing off what's left of the physical CD market is actually the big name stores like Wal-mart that undercut the price of their CDs compared to any dedicated music store since they know they can make up the lost profit by selling other stuff. Small music store goes out of business, liquidating thousands+ of CDs for as little as 5 bucks each which floods the market further resulting in the remaining stores having even worse luck trying to sell those same CDs.

[carmel_andrews]

seeming as though this thread has been duplicated in some fashion in the current event's section, i'll state my point here as well

 

 

I don't see the difference between a software house exercising their rights under the 'copyrights notice' system and a software house exercising their rights under a EULA system, it's practically the same thing just in a slightly different content

 

for the 'copyrights notice thing, i suggest you see the similar thread in the current events section

 

And since Al mentioned that all software from way back when was sold under the 'copyright notice' system (which also includes classic computer/video games) then technically there would be nothing to stop a software house from exercising their rights under the copyright notice system (in regards/respect to the 'resale' aspect of the copyright notice) since copyrights would still be valid (under the 25+75 ruling) and the other thing is most UK publishers like US gold, gremlin, ocean, firebird etc are now owned by large companies, so whilst the companies themselves are not active they still exist in that they and their IP's/copyrights and brands etc are still existing, and i am sure the same can be said of US games publishers

 

I refer you back to the similar thread in the current events section

 

And in the same way that, before this court case ever came about (the one highlighted and exampled in the 2 links in the similar thread on the current events section) Who would have thought that any software house (even autodesk) would dream of exercising their rights under the EULA system, you can apply the same logic to a software house that sold/published software on the classic gaming/computing platforms under the 'copyright notice' system (like i said, it's the same thing just in a different context)

 

 

So in that regards, this ruling could have an effect on classic gaming/computing software after all since those copyrights still exist and since autodesk exercsied their rights under the EULA system and sued someone for reselling or selling on their software through ebay, there legally wouldn't be antything to stop someone like Activision,EA, SCI, Infogrames/Atari from suing anyone under the 'copyright notice' system for selling on or reselling their classic gaming/computer software through ebay (or similar)

Edited September 16, 2010 by carmel_andrews

[Rik]

I remember back in the early 90's when stores rented out PC games.PC games back then were on 5.25 and 3.5 inch floppies of course.They'd ask you how many days you wanted the game for, $3.99 a day or something like that.It just took you a couple minutes to copy onto your hard drive and you'd have the game till you deleted it.It was pretty silly to keep the game for days.I really don't know why they bothered with that.Was it considered piracy to copy a rented game back then?I made photo copies of instruction, and copy protect code sheets also, hey, they were included in the game box.

 

Really? That's not what I remember. In the early 80s, there were software rentals which were eventually made illegal due to the ease of copying floppies. I remember ads for software rentals suddenly gone after the law was passed. That lasted until CD-ROMs came along. I vividly remember renting PC CD-ROMs at my local video store (Blockbuster, etc), but not floppy media. Like I said, that was already illegal in the 90s.

 

Renting CD-ROMs back then was not big deal because hard drives were barely 1 GB (unless you were rich) standard. So if you pirated the CD-ROM by copying the contents to the hard drive, you could only squeeze in 1 or 2 games. Even with several GBs, you could only squeeze a handful of games on the hard drive. CD writers were well over $1K, so copying CD-ROMs was quite rare. Of course when big hard drives and CD writers dropped in price, the stores stopped renting CD-ROMs. Geez, wonder why?

Yep, i kid not, but that didn't last long at all.The place stopped renting about less than 1 year after they started, for reason unknown to me, probably for legal reasons you already posted, or simply not feasible.

Edited September 16, 2010 by Rik

[gdement]

All the software I've ever seen, going back to the 80's, has always been stated to be "licensed, not sold".

You're licensing something that cost millions to produce, for $50. Obviously the terms on such a cheap license are strict.

So far, the user license has typically been transferable, but maybe that will change. That sucks, but I don't see how it's a legal issue as long as the terms are clear.

 

I didn't see anything in that article that accused people who buy used games of committing a crime. It just said they have no interest in supporting those people because (like pirates) they're not the developer's paying customers.

I guess some people just didn't like the use of the P word, and assumed a harsher meaning behind the comparison.

[jferio]

I didn't see anything in that article that accused people who buy used games of committing a crime. It just said they have no interest in supporting those people because (like pirates) they're not the developer's paying customers.

I guess some people just didn't like the use of the P word, and assumed a harsher meaning behind the comparison.

 

I'm not expecting support from them unless I bought the game from them new, or I'm paying a monthly subscription. Unfortunately, I believe in the doctrine of 'first sale' that they're actively working at dismantling. And also, there is the internet when I need to figure out what's gone wrong. But being more a console gamer, this isn't quite as likely.

 

Seriously, guys? Until you go all digital download (which will lose me anyway, and I have bought digital downloaded games in the past), you will struggle with there being a used market. Period. You can't stop physical copies from moving hand to hand when the original purchaser is done with the game. Even if you kill the used game stores and convince the thrifts to literally throw out anything video gaming they get, there will still be a community of exchange happening.

[Herbarius]

EULAs effectively supercede ownership rights, which may mean that you don't own any of your video games, you're merely leasing them. Therefore, reselling used games could actually be an illegal act.

IIRC, especially this part of the EULAs has been declared illegitimate by courts multiple times. Somehow they still include it, propably just trying to boast how "big" the company is and how "small" the consumer in relation, and hoping that people will just accept the terms without challenging them. Because if they challenge it, there's a good chance that a court will rule in their favor.

 

Another angle to attack the EULAs is by challenging the notion that clicking a button amounts to the same as signing a contract. This too has been done successfully.

Edited September 19, 2010 by Herbarius

[Goochman]

Well, when I am ready to 'return' my license then they should be forced to have a buy back option. They cant force the 'recycling' on us if they own the 'property' that we are just 'licensed' to use.

[godslabrat]

IIRC, especially this part of the EULAs has been declared illegitimate by courts multiple times. Somehow they still include it, propably just trying to boast how "big" the company is and how "small" the consumer in relation, and hoping that people will just accept the terms without challenging them. Because if they challenge it, there's a good chance that a court will rule in their favor.

 

Another angle to attack the EULAs is by challenging the notion that clicking a button amounts to the same as signing a contract. This too has been done successfully.

This is EXACTLY why I take a pretty light view of EULAs and the DMCA, opting instead for maintaining a "morally right" mentality based on more basic property laws. These draconian measures are only good until they're challenged; and they won't be challenged until a few people decide to disregard them. If I paid for something, and brought it into my house, it's my property-- I'm not going to change my mind because of some contract.

[misspent_youth]

You're fooling yourself if you think that clickwrap agreements aren't enforceable. Clicking 'I Accept' is largely equivalent to signing a contract. As long as you know there are contractual terms, you stand a pretty good chance of having them used against you. There are some issues that arise when you talk about 'take it or leave it' contracts that you can't negotiate, but mostly it's about whether or not you should have known there were contract terms at the time you bought the 'license'.

 

The main reason why this isn't much of an issue is that, other then the RIAA, most businesses realize that suing your customer is a sucker's bet. You just try and take a software company to court and watch their lawyers file numerous motions to dismiss your lawsuit based on the stuff in their EULA.

[jferio]

The main reason why this isn't much of an issue is that, other then the RIAA, most businesses realize that suing your customer is a sucker's bet. You just try and take a software company to court and watch their lawyers file numerous motions to dismiss your lawsuit based on the stuff in their EULA.

 

I've noticed Sony is doing this exact thing regarding the class action lawsuit over them patching out the ability to load other operating systems on the PS3. They are pointing to the clause in the EULA, saying it gives them the right to basically revoke functionality.

 

On a somewhat related note, my brother was basically betting that I'd not turn down a PS3 given to me. I told him if he did try to give me one, I'd point him at the game store closest to him to trade it instead... even though I'd have no plans to sign up for the network or anything else, PS2 is as late as I go with Sony now, and that's only because I already had it when Sony earned a place in my Never Trust Again list.