41 replies to this topic

[Stainless]

I did some more research this morning, and the results surprised me.

PC sales of physical product (cd/dvd) are running at about 5% of console sales.
Digital sales in the UK add very little to the equation, so overall the PC market in the UK is now a minority market.

However, world wide is a different matter. It is very difficult to get accurate figures, but it looks like pc sales may equal console sales.

I find this very worrying, there are already court cases in Germany that challenge the legality of digital downloads.

The argument goes like this.

1) Consumers buy games on physical media.
2) When they have finished playing the game they can trade the disc in or sell it
3) Digital downloads cannot be resold as they have no physical media
4) Consumers have the right to sell articles they have bought
5) Therefore digital downloads are illegal

I guess we better hope the court case fails or we are all in the sh1t.

[fireside]

Countries all have their own trade and copyright laws, so it would only apply to Germany and would effectively limit the country from Steam purchases among others. Digital Media is something kind of new and we are still adjusting to it. When it was sold on physical media, we understood it as part of that physical media. With the danger of piracy, that pretty much changes when the transfer of goods is electronic. If we want things to run smoothly as far as copyrights, we'll have to accept the way Steam and Amazon, etc, are doing it.

[Stainless]

Don't forget that we have Europe now, if Germany rules in favour of this nutter, then it is only a matter of time before it becomes a European law.

And don't think they won't, if you saw some of the stupid laws they have passed you wouldn't believe it.

[Kenneth Gorking]

Stainless, on 24 February 2013 - 10:09 AM, said:

Don't forget that we have Europe now, if Germany rules in favour of this nutter, then it is only a matter of time before it becomes a European law.

Unless it gets appealed and goes to the European Court, where it could get overturned, and thereby never be a law in any European country. Could go the other way, though, but I doubt it. Steam has done very well in combatting piracy, but a law like this, would just return thing to the way they were before.

On another note, I was quite surprised that Sony included an optical drive in the PS4. I think I heard some bullshit argument about games being to big for download, so that's why they did it. My Battlefield 3 installation is 27.8 GB, and I never sat around moaning "I wish this was on a disc!". ISPs are slowly pulling their heads out of their asses and upping the speeds, so I was quite confused by this direction.

Also, this: http://www.escapistm...on-Old-Bullsh-t

[fireside]

I don't get the Blue Ray disc thing, either. Even Microsoft's console will have it this time around. It seems like a needless expense.

[Albertone]

@Stainless: you're British, right? Well, with some luck and British people well known determination, I'm confident UK will leave the Soviet Union II (former European Union ) just in time for the tea . After all, living on a rainy island has its pros

[Reedbeta]

Kenneth Gorking, on 28 February 2013 - 09:28 AM, said:

My Battlefield 3 installation is 27.8 GB, and I never sat around moaning "I wish this was on a disc!". ISPs are slowly pulling their heads out of their asses and upping the speeds, so I was quite confused by this direction.

The USA is really behind on broadband speed though. The average speed was only around 5 Mbps in 2011, according to Wikipedia. Your Battlefield 3 installation would take 13 hours to download at that rate. I think it's still too soon to get rid of optical drives; Internet speeds are getting faster, but they're not fast enough yet that a new console can afford to rely on Internet alone.

[fireside]

I'm using 512 Kbps because it saves me 20 dollars.

[Vilem Otte]

Lets get to OT on inet:
So I'm kind of exception running on some 16 Mbps and having it at least 2 times LESS expensive than our over-priced telecomunication companies. Currently paying like 400 CZK per month (thats like EUR 15), although the price is not that shiny if you take in account that average salary in "my part of the country" is EUR 800 (it's equal to F.e. teacher's salary) with expenses (house/flat, food, etc.) actually same like in any other EU country.

But basically you can download through night don't you?

[Stainless]

I am in a new complex only built 5 years ago, in the centre of a major UK city (Southampton), and the best broadband I can get is from Sky.

I get about 2.5M down and 500K up.

The place I lived before this one I only got half that speed. I wouldn't pay to download a game that would take 15 hours to arrive at my machine.

The blu-ray disc is lovely, I've got a stand alone 3d blu ray player and the difference between blu-ray films and dvd is amazing.

I support the choice of a blu-ray player in a games machine as it actually reduces the number of devices I need on the rack below my TV.

[.oisyn]

Stainless, on 24 February 2013 - 10:09 AM, said:

Don't forget that we have Europe now, if Germany rules in favour of this nutter, then it is only a matter of time before it becomes a European law.

And don't think they won't, if you saw some of the stupid laws they have passed you wouldn't believe it.

Never gonna happen. Much more likely is that distributors of downloadable content are required to allow the transfer of purchased content to someone else. This is already happening with other software licenses (such as MS Windows) that according to the EULA cannot be transferred, but the EU says they can.

[Kenneth Gorking]

Stainless, on 01 March 2013 - 09:16 AM, said:

I am in a new complex only built 5 years ago, in the centre of a major UK city (Southampton), and the best broadband I can get is from Sky.

I get about 2.5M down and 500K up.

I just tried looking at Skys site, and I feel bad for you man. The lengths they go to, to hide the actual speeds of their connections, is depressing. I had to roam around in some legal bullshit to see the actual speeds.

I just tried looking at some local deals on broadband here in Aarhus, which is about the same size as your city, and the slowest I can get is 20/3, and the fastest is 150/15, with a data cap of 2.5 terabytes per month. And I live in a building that's older than my mother.

IIRC, a price war broke out here in Denmark, I think it was around 2006-2007. Several new companies appeared that underbid the few large companies that existed at the time, which then forced them to either lower their prices or increase the speeds for the same price. This still goes on today, which is great for us consumers. There was also laws put forth by the government, regarding binding periods. They used to for 12 months, but were legally forced to be no more than 6 months, and in an attempt to keep customers, the ISPs all decided to just drop the binding period altogether. The only form of 'binding' there exists now, is a 30 day cancelation period, and that is it.

[Stainless]

JEALOUS

[geon]

Stainless, on 23 February 2013 - 09:36 AM, said:

5) Therefore digital downloads are illegal

I guess we better hope the court case fails or we are all in the sh1t.

I'm puzzled by that logic, and the implication of it. Wouldn't it force digital distributors (like Steam and the App Store) to let you resell your downloads, rather than making them illegal altogether? Europe is still a large market, and distributors wouldn't just ignore it.

And why would we all be "in the sh1t"?

[fireside]

Once you allow the private sale of apps, it opens it up to simple piracy again. Steam has just gotten distributors to look seriously at the PC again. They may be able to allow sales within the Steam framework to go through. Maybe that would satisfy them. That would kind of go along with Newell's idea of multiple stores. At the end of the day, people need to get money for the work they did. That's what copyrights are all about.

[geon]

> it opens it up to simple piracy again

How? The same DRM would still apply, but the ownership would be transferred to another user account.

[fireside]

Quote

How? The same DRM would still apply, but the ownership would be transferred to another user account.

From what I understand of it, they think they should be able to sell it to anyone. I haven't been following it that close, though.

[.oisyn]

So? That doesn't imply you should be allowed to copy it and run it everywhere. Just that you're able to transfer the license. With Steam that would mean using some sort of tool or request form to move a game you own to someone else with a Steam account, after which you will no longer have the game in your list but the other person will.

[Stainless]

It's a nightmare.

We let an end user create an account, then they register devices. I think we allow 5 devices per user.
The DRM works by creating a UID for a device and when the game is downloaded the user with the device UID owns the game. He can then play it on any of his registered devices.

We allow sharing of games, but this requires the owner of the licence to be within comms range of the other player. If the other player leaves the vicinity of the owner, then the game goes to the unpaid state. This usually means it goes into demo mode.

Selling the game on would be a nightmare, it could be done, but any devices that a paid for game is installed on would continue to appear to be the full paid for version until the device is connected to a network.

Without a network connection I cannot see any way the DRM could be disabled.

I really don't like the idea of using a time out, if the game hasn't been connected to a network for a given period of time then the DRM goes to an unpaid state.

If I was playing a game and it suddenly went dead I would be pretty pissed off.

We have to hope that the court case fails, otherwise downloadable games might become a thing of the past. Like Concord, a beautiful moment long gone.

A few years ago I would have laughed at the idea, but with some of the unbelievable rulings I have seen in the press in recent years, I am genuinely worried.

[geon]

You could require that the game is disabled for user A before it gets enabled for user B. You don't need to make it *easy* to transfer ownership, just possible.