Developers Fight Used Game Sales via New-only DLC for Gears of War 2, NBA Live and Rock Band

They finally take out the mask, DRM is not here because of piracy, not even because of the second hand market. It's more general, they want total control, monopoly. If somebody wants to play my game, he'll have to pay me.
DRM began on PC with the excuse of piracy, now is exported to consoles. Reason: second-hand market (which is LEGAL!).
Now its just a portion of the game, soon the whole game will be tied to one console. You won't be able to play it on your friend's XBOX (it happens on XBOX live arcade games already), and you won't be able to sell it, obviously.

I'm beginning to see hackers as saviors.

Great, its a end run around the first sale doctorine. So i pay for these "extras" and then when i go to exercise my right to resell a game the publisher keeps part of the software? How is this not a violation of First Sale? They are essentially saying that i, the legal purchaser of the software have no right to resell this "extra" content that i paid for. Thats not right.

I hope they get the fuck sued out of them. Its BULLSHIT.

The 60 dollar price point is just insane. Fix that and I'll buy new.

This is great news!

For me I will simply buy less shitty games that I am on the fence about.

Thank you game industry for saving me money.

I should have seen this coming. It's so simple. As long as these access codes give you truly meaningful content (i.e. levels, equipment, etc. and not fluff) this will work for the AAA titles (especially multiplayer) and Gamestop's asking price will take a $10-$20 hit; maybe more.

As stgdz noted, CD keys for console games. Regular firmware updates, mandatory hard drive installs that can take 10-20 minutes, internet access required to download very important patches, and now this. Consoles certainly stole a few pages out of the PC handbook this generation.

This sounds wonderful for someone who will, for whatever the reason, need to return a game. Retailers are going to refuse to take the return because the person may have used the one time code.

This whole system stinks.

I see the sentiment here for developers and publishers missing out on that second or third sale, and by all means, they should probably get it. But it's funny how greed is driving this new push for digital distribution, rather than true innovation for the purpose of growing the market.

good! I'm tired of EB/GameStop becoming little more than glorified pawn shops where they'd actually prefer you buy used (at only a small discount) rather than reward the developer for hard work.

So wait, they'll just cut out features and content that should already be in game. Then if you pay regular price for the game you get the entire game....

I remember this. This is like shareware but for console games.

you can pay 20 bucks for shareware quake which included 1 episode. Or if you bought the full thing and payed 50 bucks, you'd get all 4 episode.

LINUX SUCKS

I understand where they're coming from, and I think it's a good idea.

At the same time, $60 is a lot. Most people can't afford to buy every new game at full price. If developers dropped the price of a new game slightly, it would be an easier pill to swallow.

So now console games are under fire. You'd think I'd feel bad but I hate Gamestop so anything that hurts them is fine with me.

Is anyone really surprised that Cliffy B. is also somehow linked to this. ROFL. That guy sucks.

Wow. What a bunch of cunts.

sounds like a step in the 'right' direction as far as their perspective is concerned. this will probably even work out better for a small niche of players like me.

i don't do multiplayer and i don't buy DLC, and i buy used games 99% of the time (ebay/amazon). therefore, used games without the precious DLC codes should be even cheaper now. as well as the fact that if i don't bother usign the dlc code from any new game that i would buy, it will have a higher resale value on ebay/amazon.

sounds like a deal to me.

Next developers are going to start crying about how only their AAA, $200million dollar games sell while the rest get overlooked for some reason they'll probably blame on consumer.

I think there are far to many people with ONLINE DEGREES working in the marketing departments of these developers? Seriously what gives! Look you don't even have to hire me and I will tell you how to sell more NEW GAMES! If I could pick up a brand new console game for $25-$35 I would be buying a lot more games. Crap I would prolly buy games I didn't even like for those prices! In fact I am not sure I would even bother ever buying used at those prices. I have come to a point in my like where I have more money than time and I will be damned if I waste my hard earned money and time on a half baked game. I actually wait until games have been out for 3-6 months to get my used copies. There are practically NO games worth $60.00 when you consider that 80% off them play like every other game that has come out for the last 8 years. I can't even count how many games I have bought in the last 2 years that have been full of bugs or are nearly unplayable from the GET GO. NO! You will not get $60.00 out of me for ANY game EVER again. I am a GAMEFLY advocate! I get to play games that I am interested in for about $3-$6.00 each when I average it out...when I find one I really like I just pay the KEEP IT price...no better deal around. Especially when you consider the other GAMEFLY benefits like the $5.00 credits or the 10% discount. NOPE I AM HANGING ON TO MY CASH FOR ONLY THE GAMES WORTHY OF MY CASH! NO MORE IMPULSE CRAP FROM THIS GAMER!

so EA Canada made NBA Live 2010 obsolete before work on it even started. Brilliant.

This is not the way to tackle the issue.

1. Gamers will suffer. Online will be frustrating. Frankly I'm surprised at this bizarre decision.

2. Essentially Epic are punishing the buyer in order to get to the seller.

Sounds like a crazed government policy. It's finalized my choice in NOT getting Gears 2. Used or NEW.

Just out of curiosity, do stores that sell used CDs and books have to give a percentage over to the record labels in publishing houses?

If not, why does the gaming industry feel they are being cheated out of profits?

just a few more years until the brick & mortar become obsolete...

lol CD keys for console games.

"This information and data is very valuable and it wasn't free for us," an EA representative explained on Operation Sports. "T-Mobile is paying for it this year for all users who buy the game new. This is a very expensive tool to use, and if you don't buy it new, then you'll have to pay for this. It isn't greed at all."

that might hold water if used game sales somehow increased the pool of players making use of the data... but it doesnt. say they sell 1,000,000 copies of the 360 version. in theory, some part of the purchase price (subsidised by t-mobile, i guess?) is used to pay for the 365 functionality for that copy. so at the end of the day, the 365 stuff is funded for 1 million players.

now say 500,000 of those people realize that its the same damn game they had last year, and decide to ditch it for something fresher, so they head down to their local games pawn shop and trade it in for pennies on the dollar. every one of those traded games that isnt immediately re-sold actually REDUCES the number of people using the paid-for 365 functionality. 1 million paid for, somewhat less than 1 million in use, and ea comes out ahead on the equation.

but hey, we're in hypothetical land here so lets just assume that ALL those 500k copies are immediately resold to another 500k gamers. ea gets no cut of this transaction, and begins to cry great crocodile tears of frustration... "you assholes havent paid for the 365 stuff so we arent going to give it to you! we gotta eat, you know?" the problem being, the tally is STILL 1 million copies that have had 365 functionality paid for, matched up with 1 million users actually using that functionality... and ea is dead even, just like they were on day one.

so how is this not greed?

OK that's it, I'm not gaming anymore. This is a sign for the awful things to come.

My suggestion, back when it was announced that GoW2 would have this, is still the same:

1) Calculate the period when 90% of your new game sales are made (I'd estimate this to be between 3 and 6 months for most games)
2) Release limited-time exclusive content for only new games owners during this period. After this period, make it available for all
3) Profit! (and gain gaming community goodwill!)

Why not allow people who buy the used game to pay extra for the Gears add on? Wouldn't that be more profits?

Regardless of what you think about penalizing secondhand buyers*, isn't choosing multiplayer maps as the penalty a terrible, terrible idea? You will have a set of maps that some people can never get, which segments the online player base. What's going to happen to people who rent the game the first week? Everyone's map rotation will include those exclusive maps, and the renters will get dropped from servers left and right. That can't be good for your game's word-of-mouth reception.

* I think it sucks, because I use GameFly exclusively to get console games. I rent it from GameFly, and if I like it, I keep it. This means I am effectively always buying used.

I can only speak for myself (obviously) but I rarely rent or buy used anymore. I did it a lot more when I played on a PS2. Now I have a better idea of what kind of games I like. So if there’s a game that I’m interested in, I try to keep up-to-date on details. When it’s released, I’ll try out the demos, but I try to stick only to games I think I’d keep. If I think I’d trade it in, then I never pick it up in the first place. But if I buy it, I plan on keeping it. I only have 10 games for the 360, but I enjoy all of them. I wasted too much money on PS2 games to find out I don’t really enjoy some genres. Like sports.

And so it begins. If games were cheaper we wouldn't fret over buying new ones.

At this rate I can afford about 4 new games a year. The rest I'll pick up used. Somethings got to change.

This is going to screw over a lot of used game buyers who are unaware of this policy. Either these devs are not aware of this, or are counting on said disgruntled consumers taking the used copy back and exchanging it for a new one to get the full content. I generally don't buy used games unless I need to so I don't have a huge stake in this either way, but this approach seems a bit disingenuous towards people who are probably ignorant of the alleged harm they are doing.

This is a sign of the end times. This is my theory for the future of this BS:

Eventually they'll make you register your game to your xbox live id (or more likely your console) OR you can't play the game AT ALL. It'll come with some one time use code on the game manual that will you'll have to register to your console before you can play. And to switch the code will take a call to the company, and you'll only be able to do it 3 times before that code is useless. AND, not only that, the game literally would not work without it being able to download some file with your legit liveID to your legit console and game. So xbox modders would be doomed...

This would kill GameFly and decrease game sales for all games. I use gamefly because most of the time it's not worth buying some games, but merely trying them and returning. Game demos often aren't enough to experience the game, and often aren't around for the titles I want to try.

where' is the bad guy's head in that picture?

Is it just me, or is this just going to make used games cheaper in the medium term?

Even though I do get many games used (via trading sites, eBay, and independent game stores, not lining the pockets of EB/GS) I think this is a fair response. I'd rather see a broader system put in place that pays developers/publishers for used game sales and rentals though, just as with movies.

Meh, just means more games I'll have to wait on for their prices to drop.

Trade-in prices are low enough as-is, regardless of good condition.

I'd rather see more of the money go back to the trader, who has no means of knowing whether he wants his game or not with the lack of demos (and demos more than five minutes long) until he forks out and buys it or chooses to leave it on the shelf til he himself can find a cheap pre-owned.

The new maps would simply get dropped from servers on PC.

It's like when BF2 had the add on packs, which weren't backwards compatible with BF2 vanilla, everyone just bought Special forces for the extra unlocks but mainly stuck with the original.

He is right that it costs EA a lot of money to get the data for the daily updates to NBA Live. I work for Synergy Sports, the company that has people logging all the games and getting the data that EA is going to be using. Although I am one of the lowest on the totem pole I know a bit about the money but I am not sure how much I should share, so I will say that it takes about 6 man hours for every NBA game between two people who make more than minimum wage. Multiply that by every NBA game, etc.

I like my college job :)