A Black Falcon
Member
I imagine there's been a thread about this before, but I didn't find anything at a glance... there's thishttp://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=521169, but we'll see if that ever happens. Hopefully it does. There's also this thread, but as I say at the end of this post, I don't think Microsoft ever had any plans to do such a thing, unfortunately. My thread here has a more general focus.
With the defeat of the XO's online-check DRM system, console gaming looks to be staying the same next gen. The online DRM future may be coming, but it's been pushed back a bit.
However, all consoles have online stores, and PC gaming is quite heavily focused on online-check DRM now. There is no 24-hour checkup, of course; instead, games simply lock to your account upon purchase. Some current-era PC games do not have this DRM, but between MMOs, Steamworks, Origin, and UPlay, to name the most prominent ones, a quite substantial number of games now are locked to a single account, even if you bought a physical copy of the game. You may be able to sell (or give away) your Microsoft, Sony, Steam, GOG, Origin, UPlay, Blizzard, or whatever, account online, but you can't sell individual titles. This means the the right of ownership has been substantially surrendered for all digitally purchased games. It's even worse for Nintendo, of course, where games are locked to a specific system, not an account. There you have to sell the physical console in order to sell your digitally purchased games.
So, online DRM or no, the one major piece missing from all digital-purchases stores, even "DRM-free" ones like Good Old Games, is that there is no legal resale of digitally purchased games. That's not "DRM-free" in my book, GOG... no resale and that games are all permanently locked to my account is just another form of DRM. Some people don't call that DRM, and that's okay, but the point is, there's no resale, even on "DRM-free" online stores.
If people believe that it's okay to only own limited, non-separable licenses of games, and not actually truly having your rights for anything that you have spent money on, that's your decision, but I quite strongly disagree. We have rights, and there should not be a separate set of rights for digital purchases. Just because you don't get a physical object does not mean that it should be treated as a separate, and lesser, category of (non-)ownership.
Now, I know that in the EU some court cases about digital ownership have happened. I hope that the EU eventually forces companies into allowing digital resale. In the interim, though, something needs to be done. I understand that mentally people think that they own things they can see, but maybe not quite as much with things that are only bytes on a hard disk (or 'the cloud'), but if you've bought it, you SHOULD have that same degree of ownership rights that you do with discs.
Now, I'd guess that on, say, GOG, the answer is "well, there is no DRM on the games themselves, so if we allowed resale, how could we ever know if the person didn't just keep a copy?" However, piracy on the PC has always been very easy. It's even easier now. Adding this really wouldn't change much. Sure people could buy a game, sell it, and keep a copy, but right now they can download a game illegally and play it. There's already so much piracy on the PC that this wouldn't change much; all it'd do is make it like it used to be, when various attempts at PC DRM or disc checks were always easily defeated by consumers who wanted to keep their game and then resell the original, DRM or no. It's always been like that on the PC. And anyway, as selling a digital game obviously requires an online connection, for systems that do have DRM, such as consoles, Steamworks, etc., it'd surely be quite easy to implement a system where your right to the game is removed since you have sold it. I guess there could be workarounds (this is why MS did that awful 24-hour checkup thing, after all, to remove the chance of someone going offline and keeping a game that they have resold), but who'd want to keep their system permanently offline? Because as soon as you go online again, it'd be removed of course. Abuse of this would be limited; most people want to be online on a regular basis. And people who never were online to begin with wouldn't have this option anyway, so things would stay the same for them. Anyway, overall, ironically, only "DRM-free" presents a problem here -- but again, even there, it's just the same situation PC gaming has been in since the beginning, so it's nothing new, and I can't possibly see it to leading to more piracy than we have.
I understand that there are issues that would have to be worked out with this, but it's actually not impossible. I can think of a couple of options. First, most obviously, within each system (Steam, or Origin, or UPlay, or Battle.net, or what have you), there could be some kind of used marketplace, where people selling accounts could sell them, and others could buy. This would keep games locked within the store they were purchased in, though; that's fine for games with DRM that requires them to use that system anyway, but for games that do not, such as non-Steamworks games sold on Steam, that would be frustrating. Still, it would be a major step forward and would be much better than nothing.
Alternatively, there could be some variant of MS's now-dead Xbox One DRM system, where you could sell your game (somehow, I'm sure it could be worked out) to any authorized reseller. You'd need this because since games have keys, you can't just resell the game... and the idea of just being able to un-license keys, which surely would be possible and would allow resale, is flawed, I think, because there'd be no way to know if the person you're buying from actually unlicensed the key or not. But some kind of system like this is not impossible, and would work. It would be limited versus the infinite resale possibilities of disc games, but when you're talking about digital purchases you're talking about registered keys instead of physical discs, so it's trickier to deal with. Trickier but not impossible, though.
Finally, there's the "DRM-free" version, that I don't think any publisher would like, but would be pretty awesome. Each store would just allow people to either sell games back to the store, or to a used marketplace in the store. Anyone else could then buy the one they're selling. I don't know about cuts for the publisher; they want them, I'm sure, but that'd be saying that I didn't actually own the game, only a license to it that I'm now revoking. True ownership would mean resale where the seller and the store get the profits, not the publisher. I bought your game, it's not yours anymore.
For games with online-registered keys this is more complex, of course. Still though, digital games should not be lost forever once the rights to those games expire and it gets removed from sale online! Right now, there are many games on almost any digital store, PC or console, which are not available anymore. As of now, the only solution to that problem, unless there was a physical, non-internet-registered release of the game somewhere, is piracy. That is awful. You should be able to resell that game, regardless of its current new-sale state, as you can with physical products. So, people who don't own Outrun 2006 for Steam can't buy it now, but if I or any of the other people who do own it wanted to sell our copy to one of them, we should be able to. Of course if we're talking about a shut-down MMO there'd be no point to resale since it can't be used anyway, so getting keys for that kind of thing wouldn't be needed, but for any game not so limited, this MUST be an option in the future. As we move into a more and more digital world (like it or not, and I definitely do not like all of the effects of that, but it is happening), we can't lose the ability to legally play great games just because their rights expired, or their publisher closed and took their games with them! That is horrible. A solution, either one I mentioned or something else, needs to be found at some point.
(Oh, and for those who agree with that Gizmondo article that the Xbox One could have had digital resale, but us darn consumers' complaints foiled third party publishers' plans to set up license resale stores, or something... uh, I admire your degree of blind optimism, bu that was never going to happen. Why in the world would they set up a store to allow resale, when they could just make everyone buy full-price new digital copies of their games? That'd be financially crazy, unless the first-party publisher was pushing them into it... which MS was most definitely not doing.)
With the defeat of the XO's online-check DRM system, console gaming looks to be staying the same next gen. The online DRM future may be coming, but it's been pushed back a bit.
However, all consoles have online stores, and PC gaming is quite heavily focused on online-check DRM now. There is no 24-hour checkup, of course; instead, games simply lock to your account upon purchase. Some current-era PC games do not have this DRM, but between MMOs, Steamworks, Origin, and UPlay, to name the most prominent ones, a quite substantial number of games now are locked to a single account, even if you bought a physical copy of the game. You may be able to sell (or give away) your Microsoft, Sony, Steam, GOG, Origin, UPlay, Blizzard, or whatever, account online, but you can't sell individual titles. This means the the right of ownership has been substantially surrendered for all digitally purchased games. It's even worse for Nintendo, of course, where games are locked to a specific system, not an account. There you have to sell the physical console in order to sell your digitally purchased games.
So, online DRM or no, the one major piece missing from all digital-purchases stores, even "DRM-free" ones like Good Old Games, is that there is no legal resale of digitally purchased games. That's not "DRM-free" in my book, GOG... no resale and that games are all permanently locked to my account is just another form of DRM. Some people don't call that DRM, and that's okay, but the point is, there's no resale, even on "DRM-free" online stores.
If people believe that it's okay to only own limited, non-separable licenses of games, and not actually truly having your rights for anything that you have spent money on, that's your decision, but I quite strongly disagree. We have rights, and there should not be a separate set of rights for digital purchases. Just because you don't get a physical object does not mean that it should be treated as a separate, and lesser, category of (non-)ownership.
Now, I know that in the EU some court cases about digital ownership have happened. I hope that the EU eventually forces companies into allowing digital resale. In the interim, though, something needs to be done. I understand that mentally people think that they own things they can see, but maybe not quite as much with things that are only bytes on a hard disk (or 'the cloud'), but if you've bought it, you SHOULD have that same degree of ownership rights that you do with discs.
Now, I'd guess that on, say, GOG, the answer is "well, there is no DRM on the games themselves, so if we allowed resale, how could we ever know if the person didn't just keep a copy?" However, piracy on the PC has always been very easy. It's even easier now. Adding this really wouldn't change much. Sure people could buy a game, sell it, and keep a copy, but right now they can download a game illegally and play it. There's already so much piracy on the PC that this wouldn't change much; all it'd do is make it like it used to be, when various attempts at PC DRM or disc checks were always easily defeated by consumers who wanted to keep their game and then resell the original, DRM or no. It's always been like that on the PC. And anyway, as selling a digital game obviously requires an online connection, for systems that do have DRM, such as consoles, Steamworks, etc., it'd surely be quite easy to implement a system where your right to the game is removed since you have sold it. I guess there could be workarounds (this is why MS did that awful 24-hour checkup thing, after all, to remove the chance of someone going offline and keeping a game that they have resold), but who'd want to keep their system permanently offline? Because as soon as you go online again, it'd be removed of course. Abuse of this would be limited; most people want to be online on a regular basis. And people who never were online to begin with wouldn't have this option anyway, so things would stay the same for them. Anyway, overall, ironically, only "DRM-free" presents a problem here -- but again, even there, it's just the same situation PC gaming has been in since the beginning, so it's nothing new, and I can't possibly see it to leading to more piracy than we have.
I understand that there are issues that would have to be worked out with this, but it's actually not impossible. I can think of a couple of options. First, most obviously, within each system (Steam, or Origin, or UPlay, or Battle.net, or what have you), there could be some kind of used marketplace, where people selling accounts could sell them, and others could buy. This would keep games locked within the store they were purchased in, though; that's fine for games with DRM that requires them to use that system anyway, but for games that do not, such as non-Steamworks games sold on Steam, that would be frustrating. Still, it would be a major step forward and would be much better than nothing.
Alternatively, there could be some variant of MS's now-dead Xbox One DRM system, where you could sell your game (somehow, I'm sure it could be worked out) to any authorized reseller. You'd need this because since games have keys, you can't just resell the game... and the idea of just being able to un-license keys, which surely would be possible and would allow resale, is flawed, I think, because there'd be no way to know if the person you're buying from actually unlicensed the key or not. But some kind of system like this is not impossible, and would work. It would be limited versus the infinite resale possibilities of disc games, but when you're talking about digital purchases you're talking about registered keys instead of physical discs, so it's trickier to deal with. Trickier but not impossible, though.
Finally, there's the "DRM-free" version, that I don't think any publisher would like, but would be pretty awesome. Each store would just allow people to either sell games back to the store, or to a used marketplace in the store. Anyone else could then buy the one they're selling. I don't know about cuts for the publisher; they want them, I'm sure, but that'd be saying that I didn't actually own the game, only a license to it that I'm now revoking. True ownership would mean resale where the seller and the store get the profits, not the publisher. I bought your game, it's not yours anymore.
For games with online-registered keys this is more complex, of course. Still though, digital games should not be lost forever once the rights to those games expire and it gets removed from sale online! Right now, there are many games on almost any digital store, PC or console, which are not available anymore. As of now, the only solution to that problem, unless there was a physical, non-internet-registered release of the game somewhere, is piracy. That is awful. You should be able to resell that game, regardless of its current new-sale state, as you can with physical products. So, people who don't own Outrun 2006 for Steam can't buy it now, but if I or any of the other people who do own it wanted to sell our copy to one of them, we should be able to. Of course if we're talking about a shut-down MMO there'd be no point to resale since it can't be used anyway, so getting keys for that kind of thing wouldn't be needed, but for any game not so limited, this MUST be an option in the future. As we move into a more and more digital world (like it or not, and I definitely do not like all of the effects of that, but it is happening), we can't lose the ability to legally play great games just because their rights expired, or their publisher closed and took their games with them! That is horrible. A solution, either one I mentioned or something else, needs to be found at some point.
(Oh, and for those who agree with that Gizmondo article that the Xbox One could have had digital resale, but us darn consumers' complaints foiled third party publishers' plans to set up license resale stores, or something... uh, I admire your degree of blind optimism, bu that was never going to happen. Why in the world would they set up a store to allow resale, when they could just make everyone buy full-price new digital copies of their games? That'd be financially crazy, unless the first-party publisher was pushing them into it... which MS was most definitely not doing.)
