PSN Store Problems Prevent PS3 Dirt 3 Multiplayer

[JDKJ]

Clearly the system of requiring redemption at the PSN Store prior to being granted online access has failed. Redemption is impossible at the moment. But my point is that the particular aspect of the system which has failed isn't the redemption requirement. It's the point of redemption (i.e., PSN Store). If it was a perfect world and PSN Store never experienced downtime and therefore consumers could always make redemption, then, technically, there wouldn't be a thing wrong with the redemption requirement, would there?

That's a meaningless statement because nothing is perfect, and planning for imperfect systems is something we all must contend with. All human made systems will invariably fail given time, as shown by this case.

The Online Pass system is just adding another layer of complication, and increasing the chance of failure for the legitimate consumer product in the name of stopping second hand sales. As I said, argue that you think that's fair all you like, but arguing that it's not hurting legitimate consumers is absurd, as that's the blatant fact of the matter before us.

Firstly, it doesn't "stop" second-hand sales. It merely requires that a second-hand buyer also purchase online access. You overstate the case, I think. Moreover, it serves the laudable purpose of ensuring that an illegally copied game isn't automatically allowed access. That is a laudable purpose, isn't it? You wouldn't want legitimate buyers "hurt" by a non-buyer gaining for free the same access for which the legitimate buyer had to pay, would you?

Secondly, I'll agree that it increases the chance of failure. But "it" by itself isn't the cause of your claimed "hurt." The cause is that it can't be redeemed because the point of redemption is unavailable. All I'm saying is that blame should be cast at the feet where it most properly belongs: the outage of PSN Store and not Online Pass per se. But for the outage, the Online Pass would be entirely redeemable.

 

[Jou]

I find the responses to this thread humorous. As people defend used game purchasing. Used games and rental services are basically paid piracy. It is funny how it is so accepted in our culture to basically make money off of piracy but piracy itself is wrong. None of the money made from rentals or used sales goes to the publisher or developers. That is why I find the RIAA and MPAA's piracy commercials so funny when it comes to piracy and the loss of money to all of those starving artists and workers who lose out when you download something. The same thing can be said of rental outlets and used game retailers, except that they are selling content and not just giving it away free. IMO I think that is more criminal than giving it away free.

 

[Digikid]

---Gee that is a shame.

*Goes back to playing Dirt 3 on the Xbox 360*

LOL!!!!

 

[squid5580]

Huh? If we assume that the buyer to whom you resold the game would have to and was willing to buy it new if a second-hand market didn't exist, then of course the publisher has lost a sale.

The assumption is wrong. If someone would've bought it new, they probably will do so. Why do people buy games in the second-hand market? I'd wager mostly because of the price.
$/?60 for a new game is really expensive, and I certainly don't pay this much (with a few exceptions). If I want to play a game I'll usually wait a bit and then buy it second-hand from someone who already tired of it, so I get it for ?30 max.

The only way I'd buy it new is if it is less expensive to start, or is on discount already. So in my case they haven't lost a sale since I would never have bought it for the price the publisher demands anyway -- instead they have the ?60 from the initial purchaser, who played it for a while and then resold it for ?30 to me. The end effect for the publisher is that they still sold one unit and one unit is being used, and for both me and the original purchaser there is effectively half the cost while we still both got to play.

Online Passes mess up this entire system just because the publisher feels entitled to extort more money from me just because I did not buy the game directly from them, but instead use something they've already been paid for in full.[/quote]

I'm not so sure the assumption is wrong or that you can assume it's wrong based on your own personal buying decisions. I suspect that if there was no second-hand market for video games, sales in the first-hand market would increase. There's gotta be some percentage of second-hand buyers who, if the second-hand market didn't exist, would suck up the difference in price because they see the benefit of owning the game as outweighing the cost of it new versus the cost of it second-hand. Gotta be.[/quote]

How is that logic workin for PC games?

 

[JDKJ]

Huh? If we assume that the buyer to whom you resold the game would have to and was willing to buy it new if a second-hand market didn't exist, then of course the publisher has lost a sale.

The assumption is wrong. If someone would've bought it new, they probably will do so. Why do people buy games in the second-hand market? I'd wager mostly because of the price.
$/?60 for a new game is really expensive, and I certainly don't pay this much (with a few exceptions). If I want to play a game I'll usually wait a bit and then buy it second-hand from someone who already tired of it, so I get it for ?30 max.

The only way I'd buy it new is if it is less expensive to start, or is on discount already. So in my case they haven't lost a sale since I would never have bought it for the price the publisher demands anyway -- instead they have the ?60 from the initial purchaser, who played it for a while and then resold it for ?30 to me. The end effect for the publisher is that they still sold one unit and one unit is being used, and for both me and the original purchaser there is effectively half the cost while we still both got to play.

Online Passes mess up this entire system just because the publisher feels entitled to extort more money from me just because I did not buy the game directly from them, but instead use something they've already been paid for in full.

I'm not so sure the assumption is wrong or that you can assume it's wrong based on your own personal buying decisions. I suspect that if there was no second-hand market for video games, sales in the first-hand market would increase. There's gotta be some percentage of second-hand buyers who, if the second-hand market didn't exist, would suck up the difference in price because they see the benefit of owning the game as outweighing the cost of it new versus the cost of it second-hand. Gotta be.[/quote]

How is that logic workin for PC games?[/quote]

Is there any market at all for second-hand PC games?

 

[mjc0961]

Codemasters says there's not a lot it can do about it.

They could have not put in an online pass in the first place. I'm sick of DRM that does nothing but make the purchaser have a shittier product. So you know what Codemasters? Screw your game.

 

[Jumwa]

Firstly, it doesn't "stop" second-hand sales. It merely requires that a second-hand buyer also purchase online access. You overstate the case, I think. Moreover, it serves the laudable purpose of ensuring that an illegally copied game isn't automatically allowed access. That is a laudable purpose, isn't it? You wouldn't want legitimate buyers "hurt" by a non-buyer gaining for free the same access for which the legitimate buyer had to pay, would you?

Secondly, I'll agree that it increases the chance of failure. But "it" by itself isn't the cause of your claimed "hurt." The cause is that it can't be redeemed because the point of redemption is unavailable. All I'm saying is that blame should be cast at the feet where it most properly belongs: the outage of PSN Store and not Online Pass per se. But for the outage, the Online Pass would be entirely redeemable.

Firstly that's just quibbling over nothing, you know what I meant, it's not as if I was claiming this act eliminated second hand sales.

Secondly, no, there's enough blame to go around, especially for the company who added an extra layer of complication to their legitimate consumers purchased product needlessly. They did so to increase their profits, and some consumers pay a price for it. Agree with their rational or not, that's what happened. I think it's silly we're debating that.

 

[Enrathi]

Same difference. First-hand or second-hand, the argument still stands that neither buyer has bought on-line access. They've only bought game content. On-line access costs both an additional fee.

That is a really weird justification. If a game is advertised with online gameplay, of course this is part of the game. Locking this out because of issues with the service (PSN store down) or because of greed (Online Pass) is nonsense.
The only way to do this in an acceptable way (IMO) is to sell the game without multiplayer, and then sell a multiplayer addon as DLC. That way nobody is suckered into thinking they are buying a complete game when actually part of it is locked behind an extra paywall.

Of course then the game they actually sell will be singleplayer only, and this should reflect itself in a more robust singleplayer experience and possibly a lower price (e.g. ?10).

I'm just chiming in to say I like this idea. I'd rather save some money and not worry about the online unless I wanted to (mainly because I almost never play online) as opposed to paying $60 for a game and not utilizing part of it. I'd own more FPSes if this were the case. I like to play them, but only single player. So I end up waiting for them to drop to $30 to pick up. Then the problem is, if I do decide to go online, everyone's already moved to the next game and the servers are almost dead. I'd rather pay cheaper up front and then if I decide to go online, buy the pass at that point.

 

[Duskflamer]

So basically, another form of copy-control is causing legitimate users problems again? Will wonders never cease.

Well said. Online Passes are just greed by the publisher, they want to force every single user to pay for (part of) the game again, even though they already purchased the disk and the publisher already got money for it.

As I said before, the developers, publishers, etc. of a game do not make any money off of used game sales. When you buy a game used, 100% of the money goes to the store you purchased it from.

Online passes become a way for companies to ensure that they get some money off a game sale. If you buy the game new for $60 bucks, you get whatever content it offers for free. But if you wait and buy the game used for, say, $30, you have to pay an extra $10 to get whatever the content is.

Look at those numbers though, you still save $20 off the full price of the game in this case. EVEN WITH THE ONLINE PASS, YOU SAVE MONEY BY BUYING THE GAME USED. The only greedy ones here are the people who complain about this procedure and want to get a game as cheaply as possible, not thinking where the money is going.

 

[Marudas]

So basically, another form of copy-control is causing legitimate users problems again? Will wonders never cease.

Not copy protection, Online Passes and the like are there to ensure the company makes money off the sale of a game (because someone buying the game used (and remember that 0% of a used game sale goes to the company that made the game) will have to pay to get the benefit of the pass).

I will always be amazed about why developers think they are entitled to proceeds from used game sales. They don't get involved in the secondary market at all, but they want money from it. The idea that they are entitled to money from those sales in the first place is ridiculous.

Imagine if Ford came knocking at your door asking for money when you sold/bought a used car...

 

[Duskflamer]

So basically, another form of copy-control is causing legitimate users problems again? Will wonders never cease.

Not copy protection, Online Passes and the like are there to ensure the company makes money off the sale of a game (because someone buying the game used (and remember that 0% of a used game sale goes to the company that made the game) will have to pay to get the benefit of the pass).

I will always be amazed about why developers think they are entitled to proceeds from used game sales. They don't get involved in the secondary market at all, but they want money from it. The idea that they are entitled to money from those sales in the first place is ridiculous.

Imagine if Ford came knocking at your door asking for money when you sold/bought a used car...

You might have been hearing recently all the arguments concerning ownership versus licence interest (mostly reffering to EULAs and the Geohot lawsuit), and that's what's at play here. When you buy a car, you own the car. Anything you do to the car is yours to do with. However games aren't the same way. Much as we may like to think otherwise, we purchase a licence to play a game, we do not "own" the game, at least, this is the view the game companies take. As such, game companies very much dislike the entire concept of used game sales, and if they're forced to allow it to happen they at least want some money back from the resale of their licence, and, if you accept the argument that you purchase the licence to play the game and not the game itself, it makes perfect sense.

Also, they made the game to begin with, that's involvement enough. Cars sometimes advertise themselves as holding their retail value right? if car companies didn't care in the slightest about the secondhand market why would they advertise that?

 

[mcattack92]

PlayStation 3 users can't catch a break now days.

 

[gphjr14]

Online passes are so flippin gay. I don't care about the developer's making money, I just want to play the game. Telling me that buying used games is evil and morally wrong is just stupid and wasteful.

Outta curiosity, if the developers don't make any money, how do you expect them to continue making games? Just wondering.

This isn't the way to make money. For people like me who buy used it just means I'll wait even longer for the price to go down if I'm going to have to pay extra. Not to mention they already made profit off the initial sale. I didn't have to pay extra money to Nissan for my first car which was used because they weren't entitled to it and I at least feel the gaming companies are equally undeserving.

 

[JDKJ]

Online passes are so flippin gay. I don't care about the developer's making money, I just want to play the game. Telling me that buying used games is evil and morally wrong is just stupid and wasteful.

Outta curiosity, if the developers don't make any money, how do you expect them to continue making games? Just wondering.

This isn't the way to make money. For people like me who buy used it just means I'll wait even longer for the price to go down if I'm going to have to pay extra. Not to mention they already made profit off the initial sale. I didn't have to pay extra money to Nissan for my first car which was used because they weren't entitled to it and I at least feel the gaming companies are equally undeserving.

The car analogies. It was only a matter of time before those started popping up all over the place.

The difference is that there's nothing about a car that's either copyrighted or licensed. That's not entirely true in the case of a video game.

 

[gphjr14]

Online passes are so flippin gay. I don't care about the developer's making money, I just want to play the game. Telling me that buying used games is evil and morally wrong is just stupid and wasteful.

Outta curiosity, if the developers don't make any money, how do you expect them to continue making games? Just wondering.

This isn't the way to make money. For people like me who buy used it just means I'll wait even longer for the price to go down if I'm going to have to pay extra. Not to mention they already made profit off the initial sale. I didn't have to pay extra money to Nissan for my first car which was used because they weren't entitled to it and I at least feel the gaming companies are equally undeserving.

The car analogies. It was only a matter of time before those started popping up all over the place.

The difference is that there's nothing about a car that's either copyrighted or licensed. That's not entirely true in the case of a video game.

Fact still remains they developers have to make profit off the initial sale. Over time their product depreciates in value, often times faster than they or distributors are willing to admit. If they can't accept that, then thats too bad and this online pass thing doesn't seem to work because you risk fucking over people who bought it new.


Also Duskflamer beat me to the car analogy.

 

[Marudas]

So basically, another form of copy-control is causing legitimate users problems again? Will wonders never cease.

Not copy protection, Online Passes and the like are there to ensure the company makes money off the sale of a game (because someone buying the game used (and remember that 0% of a used game sale goes to the company that made the game) will have to pay to get the benefit of the pass).

I will always be amazed about why developers think they are entitled to proceeds from used game sales. They don't get involved in the secondary market at all, but they want money from it. The idea that they are entitled to money from those sales in the first place is ridiculous.

Imagine if Ford came knocking at your door asking for money when you sold/bought a used car...

You might have been hearing recently all the arguments concerning ownership versus licence interest (mostly reffering to EULAs and the Geohot lawsuit), and that's what's at play here. When you buy a car, you own the car. Anything you do to the car is yours to do with. However games aren't the same way. Much as we may like to think otherwise, we purchase a licence to play a game, we do not "own" the game, at least, this is the view the game companies take. As such, game companies very much dislike the entire concept of used game sales, and if they're forced to allow it to happen they at least want some money back from the resale of their licence, and, if you accept the argument that you purchase the licence to play the game and not the game itself, it makes perfect sense.

Also, they made the game to begin with, that's involvement enough. Cars sometimes advertise themselves as holding their retail value right? if car companies didn't care in the slightest about the secondhand market why would they advertise that?

I don't know, I don't particularly enjoy the thought of moving to a point where we don't "technically" own any of the things we purchase in the first place. Be that as it may, I still don't see why the trading of the license should result in more income for the company. They're still only supporting one license, one spot on their servers, one customer for patch data, etc. I can't really get behind the idea that the license trading hands entitles them to additional funds. (Obviously, this is not the case if the license is being duplicated or misused)

 

[Duskflamer]

So basically, another form of copy-control is causing legitimate users problems again? Will wonders never cease.

Not copy protection, Online Passes and the like are there to ensure the company makes money off the sale of a game (because someone buying the game used (and remember that 0% of a used game sale goes to the company that made the game) will have to pay to get the benefit of the pass).

I will always be amazed about why developers think they are entitled to proceeds from used game sales. They don't get involved in the secondary market at all, but they want money from it. The idea that they are entitled to money from those sales in the first place is ridiculous.

Imagine if Ford came knocking at your door asking for money when you sold/bought a used car...

You might have been hearing recently all the arguments concerning ownership versus licence interest (mostly reffering to EULAs and the Geohot lawsuit), and that's what's at play here. When you buy a car, you own the car. Anything you do to the car is yours to do with. However games aren't the same way. Much as we may like to think otherwise, we purchase a licence to play a game, we do not "own" the game, at least, this is the view the game companies take. As such, game companies very much dislike the entire concept of used game sales, and if they're forced to allow it to happen they at least want some money back from the resale of their licence, and, if you accept the argument that you purchase the licence to play the game and not the game itself, it makes perfect sense.

Also, they made the game to begin with, that's involvement enough. Cars sometimes advertise themselves as holding their retail value right? if car companies didn't care in the slightest about the secondhand market why would they advertise that?

I don't know, I don't particularly enjoy the thought of moving to a point where we don't "technically" own any of the things we purchase in the first place. Be that as it may, I still don't see why the trading of the license should result in more income for the company. They're still only supporting one license, one spot on their servers, one customer for patch data, etc. I can't really get behind the idea that the license trading hands entitles them to additional funds. (Obviously, this is not the case if the license is being duplicated or misused)

It doesn't outright, otherwise they would be getting a cut of used game sales in the first place, but companies take the view that they should be getting a cut of it so they set up things like these online passes or Project $10 to ensure that if someone buys the game used, they still have to pay the game makers if they want the full experience. If people were more conscious of where the money is going in the first place there wouldn't be so many complaints about this.