Ubi DRM: Their Side of the Story

[NiX]

You demonstrated that you have no backbone when you posted this.

[eldaec]

Oh sure, if your point is that corporate lawyers are assholes, then no one is going to argue.

[Musashi]

I don't suppose anyone is willing to concede that the vitality of the second-hand games market has anything at all to due with the fact that most games aren't worth the asking price.  Funny thing that capital market. 

Not that this has anything what-so-ever to do with whether DRM is an unnecessary overreaction to piracy.

[tgr]

Call me a cynic, but "adequate consumer protection laws" are easily steamrolled by teams of corporate lawyers and fellow interest minded lobbyists.

Which brings to surface, another elephant in the DRM squabble — a lot of the legal territory is hazy — fair use, backup copy, lend to RL friend, multiple machines, but if there is a efficient, systematic enforcement (like say, an industry consortium task force of lawyers and lawyer-bots), the "consumer" may be in the "right", but face punitive financial and temporal constraints that prevent true justice.

The fun part of this is that the focus seems to have gone from "fuck pirates" and over to "fuck the consumer if he doesn't do things exactly the way we say he should do it. We need to make more money.". At least I haven't felt like I'm a valued customer the last year.

[Sheepherder]

I don't suppose anyone is willing to concede that the vitality of the second-hand games market has anything at all to due with the fact that most games aren't worth the asking price.  Funny thing that capital market.

If it wasn't worth the asking price to enough people there would be no used market, and EB / Gamestop wouldn't be able to set the price to buy used games for $15 and resell them for $45.  The fact that they can buy back month old games for that much less indicates there is an absolute glut of people willing to sell them at any price one they're done with them.

[Megrim]

Or EA:
"I'd actually make the point that for us second-hand sales is a very critical situation, because people are selling multiple times intellectual property," said Jens Uwe Intat, senior VP and general manager for European publishing at EA, speaking exclusively to GamesIndustry.biz.

"In our understanding of the business model we are actually giving away the rights to play, and if you just pass it on, pass it on, pass it on, that is not comparable to second-hand sales in the normal physical goods area where you have physical wear-out - second-hand cars, second-hand clothes, second-hand books... they're all physically wearing out, so you have an inferior quality product."

"But digital goods is not actually becoming inferior in quality, so people passing that on is actually very challenging for us," he added.

Of all the crazy fucked up rationalisations for publishers fucking the paying customer - this is my favourite.

Coming, as it does, complete with the idea that today's gamer is going to be exactly as impressed with Duke Nukem today as he was in 1991.


Games don't wear out or diminish in value over time? Suck my balls EA.

He's right to say its not like other products, because clothes, cars, books actually remain relevant a lot fucking longer than Madden 2006.

It's also conveniently ignoring the fact that a certain portion of the products they mention actually increase in value over time.

[Musashi]

I don't suppose anyone is willing to concede that the vitality of the second-hand games market has anything at all to due with the fact that most games aren't worth the asking price.  Funny thing that capital market.

If it wasn't worth the asking price to enough people there would be no used market, and EB / Gamestop wouldn't be able to set the price to buy used games for $15 and resell them for $45.  The fact that they can buy back month old games for that much less indicates there is an absolute glut of people willing to sell them at any price one they're done with them.

You read that wrong.  Most games aren't worth the publisher's asking price.  I'm speaking to the whole new vs. used phase this thread is going through.

[HaemishM]

I don't suppose anyone is willing to concede that the vitality of the second-hand games market has anything at all to due with the fact that most games aren't worth the asking price.  Funny thing that capital market.

If it wasn't worth the asking price to enough people there would be no used market, and EB / Gamestop wouldn't be able to set the price to buy used games for $15 and resell them for $45.  The fact that they can buy back month old games for that much less indicates there is an absolute glut of people willing to sell them at any price one they're done with them.

No, it speaks to the fact that most games don't even have a month's worth of entertainment in them. People want to use them and then get a new one but unfortunately, the price of such transient entertainment is completely out of whack. $60 for a game you play for 5-10 hours? Who wouldn't want to get $20 bucks back on that to put towards another new game. It's not like most people are game hoarders/collectors like schild - they want to be entertained and when they stop being entertained, they want something new.

If publishers are so fucking concerned about used games, they need to go full digital distribution and offer a subscription service to all their games. Pay $20 a month and get any games in their catalog, or any games released in their catalog in the last year.

[rk47]

Wow. I could get behind that idea. Renting digital games is definitely an attractive offer for me who went through games in less than a month.
I haven't found a game I could finish beyond a month. So $30 price for monthly rent is reasonable.

[Tarami]

Wait, what? Publishers aren't concerned about used games per se, just the money they're "missing out on." They don't want to deliver a better product in any way, they just want your money. The less they have to do in order to do so, the better. Collorary, if you want DRM'ed rental services for games, you're probably better off pirating shit than buying it.

Edit:
I understand that you obviously understand this, it was more a remark that publishers won't change their greater strategy at all until they absolutely have to.

[Sheepherder]

You read that wrong.  Most games aren't worth the publisher's asking price.  I'm speaking to the whole new vs. used phase this thread is going through.

Yeah, I was getting at that too.  The publisher's asking price will be based on how high they can realistically jack the rates up before people simply stop buying in enough numbers to harm profit, the price EB charges is not indicative of what the game is actually worth, it's indicative of how close they can shave to the MRSP while maximizing profit (by not losing customers who don't want boogers in their manual).  I would suspect Haemish is right: the reason end-user -> retail store resale value is low is because people generally don't value games they've played, though most people I know hold on to their games.

Steam's sale prices are probably near enough to the worth of the game, minus packaging.

[rk47]

There's already a lot of premiums going into 'early adopters' I can think of the recent Dragon Age for example with limited time offers of DLC and pre-orders exclusives. I don't mind not getting some shiny shit for not paying extra $5-15 for the ultimate edition but a whole DLC consisting of companion with side quest? Shit. That made me think twice. Fuck the shiny weapon of insta kill for $5 though. Too little effort went into that which isn't worth the money.

[apocrypha]

If publishers are so fucking concerned about used games, they need to go full digital distribution and offer a subscription service to all their games. Pay $20 a month and get any games in their catalog, or any games released in their catalog in the last year.

Fucking bingo.

All the evidence-free speculation about who pirates games and why they pirate them is useless nonsense and just all of your opinions battering against each other. At the end of the day no amount of DRM is ever going to stop piracy of games, same as with music and movies. The only solution that makes sense iss for publishers to accept this and embrace the reality of digital distribution properly. This means making it easier and better to buy games/music/movies than to pirate them.

If they insist on sticking with a single-purchase system then they need to add some serious value to the physical product. Every game needs to have maps, good manuals, an awesome box, a plushie, whatever, but it's got to be fucking good. I don't honestly see how this can be made to work profitably.

Far, far better is to monetarise the existing distribution. Lifetime subscriptions at a reasonable price point that give you unferrered (i.e DRM free) access to everything you want. Price point is crucial, as is quality of service - remember it has to be BETTER than just firing up uTorrent. Music would have to be top quality, none of the low-bitrate crap that Radiohead did for instance. Similarly movies, HD with no unskippable ads, trailers or FBI warnings and sensible formats.

If it was done right then it could benefit all sides. The entertainment industry becomes a contract-based subscription industry. This would give them a guaranteed, consistent revenue stream, which is the dream of almost any industry. Make the contracts 10 years long ffs, but make them cheap enough to ensure mass take-up. The way to price it is to look at how much money is spent right now, per year, on music, movies and games, average it out and set it up so that they get the same amount of money back in the end. Yeah I know that's easy to say but the instant rampant corporate greed tries to ramp that price up is the instant such a plan would fail. People will pay £20 a month, every month, for ever more, for all the games or music or films they want. They won't pay £20/month to Ubisoft *and* EA *and* Paramount *and* Virgin *and* Sony....

Yeah, it's utopian. Yeah, it's not going to happen. But it's the only thing I can think of, after 20 years of discussing piracy with many, many people, that I can see working. Anything else is just going to perpetuate the status quo which really only hurts the paying customer in the end.

Piracy is never going to go away. Ubisoft's decision here is only going to slow down the guys who write the cracks by a week or two. And piss off the paying customer. And get them shitloads of bad publicity. It's just retarded and what's needed is smart solutions that aren't aimed at making things shittier.

[schild]

1. Do you want me to buy your PC Game? Yes, go to 2.
2. Is it on Steam? No? Go to 3.
3. Is it a kickass collector's edition that I would even forgo having it even if it was available on Steam? No. Go to 4.
4. Fuckoff.

I don't really have anything else to add. Steam or bust these days. I like the idea of Gog, but I like Steam more. I like the idea of Impulse, but it's GENERATIONS behind old Steam let alone new Steam. Paying directly to a publisher? No dice. Paying directly do a developer? No dice there really either unless you're the indiest of the indie. Get on Steam.

I feel like Apocrypha just wasted a lot of text when the end-all be-all solution is right in front of us and all Valve has to say is:

"Steam DRM or nothing. You decide. We take X% of sales. You can pick when your item goes on sale."

The contract needs to boil down to that and every fucking publisher and dev on Earth (screw b.net, I don't need another thing for ONE dev) needs to get behind it.

I hate to line Newell's pockets with money, but it's just how things lined up.

Oh, and if it's not on Steam or has an amazing collector's edition, I will not begrudge a soul for morally being opposed to paying money for something and still playing it. I would expect the same treatment should I release a PC game.

Edit: Also, this thread sucks giant dick.

[tgr]

I think we can all agree that the solution to the gaming industry's problems should be very simple:

1) Make great games
2) If possible, treat the pirates as criminals
3) Don't treat customers like criminals

where 1) and 3) would have to be the most important bit.

I have to agree with schild on steam being the best current solution. It has drawbacks (as I experienced on the LAN party I've been harping on about), but if the future looks like Ubisoft's current solution, or "every game is an MMO", then I'd much rather swallow the steam pill and live with it. Steam has bitten me ONCE, the current DRM systems either in planning, development or actual production are going to bite a lot more than that. Also, steam is at the correct level of convenience so the barrier of buying games are that much less. It might turn into a monopoly, though, so it might be best to have a few competitors just to see if we can't keep the prices down a bit. I wouldn't want to see games hit $100+ just because valve etc decide "hey, we can".

And they could fix a certain pet peeve of mine, which is how different markets get different launch dates.

Edit: Hell, it would even be nice if they would add the possibility of transferring games to other accounts. I don't care if there's a reasonable fee involved, the main reason for wanting this is:

1) allow people who don't want a certain game anymore, to get rid of it, and
2) reduce the value of said steam account. A steam account with 400-500 games can be a valuable target for hackers.

[apocrypha]

Steam games still get pirated.

[Tebonas]

The only things that aren't pirated are free. And this will always be the case.

[KallDrexx]

Steam knows how to make me WANT to buy games, and that's the real type of "DRM" that needs to be used.

Shit, during the holiday season I spent money on a fuck-ton of money on games that I probably will not get a chance to play for a while, because I had an interest in the game and it was presented to me for a price that I didn't have to think about in order for the chance to play it. 

[Threash]

Shit, during the holiday season I spent money on a fuck-ton of money on games that I probably will not get a chance to play for a while, because I had an interest in the game and it was presented to me for a price that I didn't have to think about in order for the chance to play it. 

Seriously, this christmas season i spent about 80 dollars on steam and it hasn't even cost them the bandwidth to download the games because i still haven't even done that.  So basically i handed steam 80 dollars for absolutely nothing AND I'M VERY FUCKING HAPPY ABOUT IT.

[ezrast]

1. Do you want me to buy your PC Game? Yes, go to 2.
2. Is it on Steam? No? Go to 3.
3. Is it a kickass collector's edition that I would even forgo having it even if it was available on Steam? No. Go to 4.
4. Fuckoff.

Seems my Steam install is corrupt. I could install but it deletes ALL MY GAMES since I can't do a backup from outside of Steam. This entire thing is clownshoes. FUCKING CLOWNSHOES.

Probably just never gonna use Steam again. They can keep my $3,000 or whatever I've spent there.

Seriously though,

Steam or bust these days. I like the idea of Gog, but I like Steam more. I like the idea of Impulse, but it's GENERATIONS behind old Steam let alone new Steam. Paying directly to a publisher? No dice. Paying directly do a developer? No dice there really either unless you're the indiest of the indie. Get on Steam.

But Steam (or Valve, I guess) is a publisher, aren't they? They're making games available to you and taking a cut of the profits. They're not dicks to their customers the way the big publishers are, but they're hardly unique in that regard.

Steam better than Gog? How is Steam's DRM, however lax it may be, preferable to no DRM? Or do you just mean you like Steam because it has current games?

I don't buy enough games to be a huge fan of Steam so it's a moot point for me, but I can't see why they're treated as if they are incapable of doing wrong. Odds are they'll slip up someday.

[HaemishM]

Steam has slipped up many times. But on the whole, over the life cycle of that product, it has IMPROVED the state of digital video game distribution. The fact they have great weekly sales of older games and newer games, and have made their service much more customer friendly without too much onerous DRM makes them the platform to beat for digital distribution.

[Xuri]

Steam are certainly being dicks to their European customers by insisting that €1 equals $1. And even more so to their Norwegian customers seeing as we have to pay extra EU-specific VAT even though we're not actually part of the EU.

I'll bite when they've got holiday sales and specials - but having to pay €49.99 (402,69 NOK) for a random game (Batman: Arkham Asylum) when the US version costs $49.99 (296,99 NOK)? Fuck off, Valve.

[Musashi]

Steam needs competition.  That's all.

[LK]

Hard to imagine any company competing with Steam what with its years-long head start and massive catalog that encompasses most of the games industry.

[schild]

Europe gets screwed by everyone, blaming any one platform/dev/publisher is just silly.

[kildorn]

The entire model of an online repository + friends/chat + quick game making system makes it unlikely Steam will wind up with a significant competitor.

They'd need to offer the same service with enough tempting extras to make you willing to have a second game store open all the time. That or steam would have to really really hose things up in a fit of stupid.

[Ingmar]

Steam are certainly being dicks to their European customers by insisting that €1 equals $1. And even more so to their Norwegian customers seeing as we have to pay extra EU-specific VAT even though we're not actually part of the EU.

I'll bite when they've got holiday sales and specials - but having to pay €49.99 (402,69 NOK) for a random game (Batman: Arkham Asylum) when the US version costs $49.99 (296,99 NOK)? Fuck off, Valve.

I have my doubts that Valve sets the prices for non-Valve games.

[ezrast]

The entire model of an online repository + friends/chat + quick game making system makes it unlikely Steam will wind up with a significant competitor.

They'd need to offer the same service with enough tempting extras to make you willing to have a second game store open all the time. That or steam would have to really really hose things up in a fit of stupid.

No they wouldn't. Hell, not wanting to run the Steam app all the time is enough motivation for me to buy things from other places. Steam does need competition, and it has it. Otherwise they'd be dicking over consumers as hard as any other monopoly. That's what corporations do.

Europe gets screwed by everyone, blaming any one platform/dev/publisher is just silly.

This doesn't mean anything except that Steam is willing to be dicks as long as everyone else is too.

Also, "everyone is doing it" doesn't absolve everyone of blame of being dicks.

[KallDrexx]

Steam are certainly being dicks to their European customers by insisting that €1 equals $1. And even more so to their Norwegian customers seeing as we have to pay extra EU-specific VAT even though we're not actually part of the EU.

I'll bite when they've got holiday sales and specials - but having to pay €49.99 (402,69 NOK) for a random game (Batman: Arkham Asylum) when the US version costs $49.99 (296,99 NOK)? Fuck off, Valve.

Make sure you are blaming the correct people though.  Valve rarely sets prices, the publishers do.  Valve has to get their permission before doing sales as well.  That is why that whole COD4 price jump in Australia happened (where COD4 went from $50AUD to $80 AUD overnight, because Activision didn't like it being marked at $50AUD).

[kildorn]

The entire model of an online repository + friends/chat + quick game making system makes it unlikely Steam will wind up with a significant competitor.

They'd need to offer the same service with enough tempting extras to make you willing to have a second game store open all the time. That or steam would have to really really hose things up in a fit of stupid.

No they wouldn't. Hell, not wanting to run the Steam app all the time is enough motivation for me to buy things from other places. Steam does need competition, and it has it. Otherwise they'd be dicking over consumers as hard as any other monopoly. That's what corporations do.

Steam lacks any real competition right now. It's closest is probably Impulse or Direct2Drive, neither of which seem to have near it's income.

The reason is they know they WOULD have competition if they tried to fuck consumers. But it's easy (and cheap) to just peg to near or just below brick and mortar prices, and run stupidly good sales frequently. You eventually wind up with a militantly loyal customer base. edit: and a really loyal publisher/developer base. Devs seem to LOVE them some steamworks these days.

Not every company with large market share thinks "we can use this to completely fuck our customers!" because you can also use it to print money hats WITHOUT dicking your customers enough to chase them away.

And the steam app is pretty freaking trivial to run. Hell, you can even just not run it until you want to start a Steam game.

[Musashi]

I've always just assumed that B.net will eventually be reworked into the real competition for Steam.  Even if they don't ever distribute non blizz games, Steam will be competing with them on a quality of service level for sure in the very near future.

[Azazel]

Steam knows how to make me WANT to buy games, and that's the real type of "DRM" that needs to be used.

Shit, during the holiday season I spent money on a fuck-ton of money on games that I probably will not get a chance to play for a while, because I had an interest in the game and it was presented to me for a price that I didn't have to think about in order for the chance to play it. 

This.

I own 10 Steam games I haven't yet bothered to download.
I own 21 Steam games I haven't yet fired up (at all)
I own 36 Steam Games I've barely looked at-played for up to 10mins total.

I don't feel ripped off on any of them, nor do I think I'm a unique snowflake with those kinds of numbers, either. FFS, when they have uber cheap sales on things I already have, I've been buying them to gift to a friend.
(Also, can you imagine what the numbers were llike when I used to pirate stuff instead of buy it?)  

[ezrast]

Steam lacks any real competition right now. It's closest is probably Impulse or Direct2Drive, neither of which seem to have near it's income.

The reason is they know they WOULD have competition if they tried to fuck consumers. But it's easy (and cheap) to just peg to near or just below brick and mortar prices, and run stupidly good sales frequently. You eventually wind up with a militantly loyal customer base. edit: and a really loyal publisher/developer base. Devs seem to LOVE them some steamworks these days.

Not every company with large market share thinks "we can use this to completely fuck our customers!" because you can also use it to print money hats WITHOUT dicking your customers enough to chase them away.

And the steam app is pretty freaking trivial to run. Hell, you can even just not run it until you want to start a Steam game.

Yes, Steam absolutely does have competition. They may be the biggest player in their field but there are tons of places to buy games online, and absolutely nothing stopping any Steam user - aside from brand loyalty - from saying "eh, I think I'll pick this one up from GamersGate instead" the moment they take a wrong step.

They're not being nice to you because they like you.

[HaemishM]

They are being nice because they like your filthy sweet cash.

The reason they are on top over their competition is because they provide a superior service, better deals and the road from purchase decision to playtime is fucking short and smooth. Direct2Drive still has you download and install stuff the old fashioned way, whereas Steam puts you two clicks from purchase to play.

[rattran]

Steam has come a long, long way. When it started, it was a bloated buggy mess, sure, but Valve fixes shit. And with competitors like EA's download system cutting you off from your games after 6 months? I'll stick with Steam.