Obsidian Hopes "Digital Distribution Stabs the Used Game Market in the Heart"

[subtlefuge]

Until they make 10 more games that balance out the fact that I paid 60 USD for Alpha Protocol, Obsidian can politely fuck off about the "Used Game Problem."

Spoiler: Obsidian

You are the problem.

And they don't set the prices for their products either.

The point, which you missed, was that Alpha Protocol sucked. If I hadn't traded it in already, it wouldn't be worth the effort of crossing the room and opening the case to play it again.

Price isn't the issue, it's value.

I trade in used games that suck to purchase new games that hopefully do not. I don't see why Obsidian should see any money from people deciding to rummage through my garbage.

 

[Sutter Cane]

Until they make 10 more games that balance out the fact that I paid 60 USD for Alpha Protocol, Obsidian can politely fuck off about the "Used Game Problem."

Spoiler: Obsidian

You are the problem.

And they don't set the prices for their products either.

The point, which you missed, was that Alpha Protocol sucked. If I hadn't traded it in already, it wouldn't be worth the effort of crossing the room and opening the case to play it again.

Price isn't the issue, it's value.

I trade in used games that suck to purchase new games that hopefully do not. I don't see why Obsidian should see any money from people deciding to rummage through my garbage.

except alpha protocol was brilliant.

 

[Therumancer]

If they stopped reaching for more profits, their shares will suffer
If they did not try and kill the used game market, their shares will suffer
If they do not take a hard line against piracy, their shares will suffer
If they do not listen to the shareholders who make stupid decisions, their shares will suffer.

If you believe in capitalism you need to believe in all of the above. The system demands they get bigger and better and if they don't consistently get bigger and better, they will suffer and start firing people to make sure their profit margins keep going up to make people happy.

That is all, really.

Not really, what your talking about is the corperate mentality.

At it's basic level capitalism is about owning your own property, and being able to seek a personal profit through competition. As opposed to the state owning all the property on a fundemental level, or being able to seek only the profit of the community rather than any kind of personal gain. This is again a very simplistic run down.

I agree with that in principle, but the issue is with a few greedy arseholes ruining things for everyone else. It's the differance between say eating a lavish meal, and buying a bunch of food and leaving it to rot because you can, or say killing in self defense or for an ideal (like the defense of a nation) and engaging in recreational mass murder. Something that is okay on a basic level is no longer okay when taken to excessive extremes.

Of course when dealing with things like capitalism there is no easy solution to the problems, which is why they haven't been solved. After all how does one impose reasonable limits without ultimatly creating something akin to a socialist state? The lack of an easy solution is why nobody has implemented one. Every system has it's weaknesses, and while I support Capitalism as the best social theory going, it DOES have it's weaknesses and the excesses of merchant-lords (today known as Corperate CEOS and the like) are one of them.

I have no real problem with calling people and situations like this out, and do think more effort needs to be spent striving for some compromise that can preserve the idea of the system without allowing this kind of ridiculous excess. Indeed I think it's the excess of a relative handful of greedy people and organizations that are seriously strangling the civilized western world and leading to a lot of these economic problems. In the end when you have more money than you or your kids could ever reasonably spend, why the F@ck do you need more? For a lot of the people on top it's not about needing the money, but a sort of game to see how big they can get. What's more the people at that level kind of need to invent things for themselves to buy, because there really isn't anything to do with those huge piles of money except watch them get bigger.

At any rate, this is going beyond the scope of the gaming industry because it's not on that level yet. Generally speaking I see the high-end of the problem represented by things like Citigroup (look it up). That doesn't mean that I approve of the exploitive mentality, and at the end of the day once they are making a solid profit there is no reason to need constant growth. The gaming industry is a multi-billion dollar institution and there is no real need for it to gouge and get bigger, other than as you point out, a bunch of corpeate types who have huge piles of money wanting more money that they really don't have any use for at that level... is the gaming industry Citigroup? Not yet, but it is operating under that same kind of exploitive mentality, and I have no problem calling them on it.

 

[Seydaman]

I support this. I'd rather more money go to the people making the games than the distributors...

 

[Therumancer]

I hope Obsidian's digital distribution model stabs all the money they would've spent on retail profits and physical objects off the digital price.

But I guess that would be just silly, now wouldn't it?

Pretty much my thoughts on the subject. You'll notice digitally purchused games cost the same as their physical counterparts, and oftentimes more if you look at the console distribution services.

Given that the high asking price is justified by the abillity to recoup part of that expense through trade ins, one would expect them to lower the prices if they wanted to cut down on used game trade ins, but at the end of the day they aren't REALLY concerned about the principle of the thing but how to make as much money as possible and there is no point in going after used games if they don't make any more money in the process of doing so.

On Steam, games that are only distributed digitally are much cheaper than the games that are also sold on retail. They can't have games that are sold in stores cost less on Steam because then the stores will complain about unfair competition (like what happened in Austrailia, where they have to pay the full retail price even on Steam.)
If you are patient though, you can just wait for the game you want to buy to be on a sale and get it for a better price.

How long do you expect that to last though?

Understand something, Gabe might be many things, but he's not stupid and never struck me as actually being all that generous from bits I've seen here and there despite his reputation. He seems to be engaged in a long term strategy similar to that of Wal*Mart.

The basic idea being that he undercuts everyone else's prices, reducing his own profits, but ensuring he gets a dedicated customer base due to all the games people own on his platform, and gradually driving the competition both from other digital services and hardcopy games out of business or reducing them to a minimal prescence. Once he has a virtual stranglehold he can stop offering the sales and great deals, and what are people going to do about it? He's the only game in town.

Do some reading on it, I'm as guilty as anyone of using STEAM and taking advantage of the deals, but there has been plenty written on the subject, including the analogy to Wal*Mart.... even going so far as to show how well Gabe allegedly treats his employees just as Wal*Mart treated theirs until they became virtually the only game in town. Gabe seems to be playing for the long term actually.

I've also heard some occasional rumors speculating that one of the reasons why Valve has been so horrendous with it's release schedule for games is financial issues. The reports of their profits being exagerrated because of all those sales, which means Valve doesn't actually have a lot of resources to invest in the actual games. Gabe being more interested in dominating the virtual marketplace in the long run, as opposed to game development... and that DOES make a degree of sense, especially if it's true that when Valve has a sale it's actually paying the differance to the creators in most cases.. so say a 50% sale winds up having Valve giving that 50% to the game creator, and ultimatly only making the fees it collects for hosting the game when that applies.

In the end nobody knows all the details except for Gabe, but it's something to consider. Listen to some anti-Valve rants sometime.

 

[00slash00]

a publisher doesnt like used game? how extremely shocking. in equally shocking news, israel and palestine are not bff

sweet jesus, i want used games to go away just so i dont have to hear this stupid fuckin debate over and over again

 

[targren]

I'd probably care more about what this yet-another-publisher-whingebag had to say, if Obsidian had ever made a goddamn game worth playing, rather than being firmly cemented in as "the guys to whom you hand off a successful license so they can make a shitty sequel."

 

[EgonCom]

Obsidian Hopes "Digital Distribution Stabs the Used Game Market in the Heart"

I don't know why but I have read it as "Obsidian hopes to kick as hard as it can in it's clients..."
well, You get the idea..

 

[Alandoril]

Why in the name of all that some consider holy, can't these people realise that used sales do absolutely nothing to their cash flow. The customer has already paid for that game, it's ceases to be your property the moment it is purchased, any resale value is none of your business. Literally.

People who buy a used copy of a game would not have purchased it new anyway. You're not losing, you're just not gaining it. That's entirely different.

 

[Luke Cartner]

I would strongly disagree that the used game market and piracy have little in common for an ethical perspective.
Both result in the copyright holder not getting paid for there efforts. Both include people not paying for a license to use that copyright (in the form of the game).
Just because you paid some money does not make it ethical anymore than paying for a pirated game would be.

 

[Sigma Van Lockheart]

yeah? well I hate digital distribution

so THERE!!

That?s just silly what you should be saying is you hate that man (I don?t know his name nor can I be arsed to look) but love online distribution like steam.

 

[Snotnarok]

Snip

Everything is going to change with the next generation of consoles I think, with Microsoft using windows 8 on the next xbox it could potentially lead to user hardware upgrades (maybe like the 64 where you put your more ram in or whatever).

Well this is speculation, but it'd be neat if they did infact go this route because then it would be more like a PC and then updates, DLC and such might be a bit more universal and such. Though I doubt change will come this quickly considering everyone on the console market is enjoying charging a flat rate of 60 bucks for games worth 20 or less.

I am annoyed at devs doing development on just one console and by the time it gets to PC the game has no customizable controls and it's not optimized, so your system could run a holodeck but not their game.

 

[bootz]

all i read was QQ, unless you buy new I won't be able to afford the kfc gravy hot tub for my hippos in my private zoo they might just get a water one. WAAAnnn. QQ

All your'e doing is losing customers by bitching at them.

 

[lord.jeff]

Honestly why are devs getting so mad about the used games model? When someone buys your product they have the right to sell it again, that's called capitalism.

Capitalism is only good when it's in favor of the companies. When it's in the favor of the customers companies throw a fit.

And people throw a fit when it benefits the companies. I do think companies are over reacting to used sales but I can't really blame them for trying to prevent them, they're making a product that they plan to make money off of and when half of their products that get sold don't return any money to them they have a right to get worried and for their own best interest should do something about it.

 

[bootz]

I would strongly disagree that the used game market and piracy have little in common for an ethical perspective.
Both result in the copyright holder not getting paid for there efforts. Both include people not paying for a license to use that copyright (in the form of the game).
Just because you paid some money does not make it ethical anymore than paying for a pirated game would be.

So what if your game doesn't work either because of a bug or something else.
What recourse should you have if you can't sell it? You can't return it because its opened. You can't sue because of the eula

 

[Aprilgold]

Snip

Everything is going to change with the next generation of consoles I think, with Microsoft using windows 8 on the next xbox it could potentially lead to user hardware upgrades (maybe like the 64 where you put your more ram in or whatever).

Well this is speculation, but it'd be neat if they did infact go this route because then it would be more like a PC and then updates, DLC and such might be a bit more universal and such. Though I doubt change will come this quickly considering everyone on the console market is enjoying charging a flat rate of 60 bucks for games worth 20 or less.

I am annoyed at devs doing development on just one console and by the time it gets to PC the game has no customizable controls and it's not optimized, so your system could run a holodeck but not their game.

True, but its a good sign because their milking retail copies for their worth, this is blatantly obvious with all those DLC's coming out for 10$ for a costume.