Opinion: Downloadable Con
Tarryn van der Byl administers the probe on shameless corporate profiteering
Downloadable Con...
Opinion: Downloadable Con
Tarryn van der Byl administers the probe on shameless corporate profiteering
Thanks Tinman - Im am quoting my comments from the Article.
Then someone said this:Although I've never been a huge DLC fan and have only ever forked out cash for the Fallout 3 DLC packages I see what Tarryn is trying to say.
Since reading up on the subject of the Cerberus Network i at first was really excited. It looked like Bioware & EA where giving something back to the fans. But i see the point Tarryn is trying to make. Details on the exact content available through the network, free, is still sketchy at best. The extra character and Hammerhead tank is about all we know of thus far.
However forcing people to pay for the ability to download DLC they will have to pay for again is Shameless. As long as Publishers don't take it as far as having to buy the game new or pay X amount just to finish the game its fine buy me. Coz at the end of the day, the choice is yours. To DLC or Not to DLC.
And i replied thus:hamsterjie za on 22/01/2010 05:01:12
In my opinion, this attempt at shafting the 2nd hand market is really not going to help the industry as a whole. the 2nd hand market is a big market its the market between retail buying and piracy....so now its like you forcing this market to make a choice. In SA there are many gamers buying pirated games simply because the price tag of games is so high. Eventually the direct-to-drive idea of purchasing games will be the only way and then the second hand market will fall away completely but until then stop making SA consumers pay almost R1000 experience a full game ie game + DLC + Cap
Ok now that we are all up to speed. Thoughts? Oh and Thanks to Azi for a great piece.@ hamesterjie za: The publishes and studio's doing see any of the money from the second hand market. So a game could be sold and resold 10 times with the publisher/studio only getting its cut once.
As for the buy pirated games simply coz the price is too high, its a choice. You choose to have that game. Waiting till it gets cheaper is always an option. Also even with this DLC to buy DLC its still a choice. Your not going to NEED that DLC and if you do then fork out the money.
If the hobby is to expensive for your taste get a new hobby. Dont hide behind the price tag and try to justify piracy.
The second hand market will never truly die, as there are people out there who don't want the DLC.
trying to use any means to justify an illegal act is silly stupid, it's just not on.
Play games, not platforms
This is just a thought, but what if its some half backed idea to fight piracy? I mean you can't pirate the code thats loose in the box since it only works once and if you don't have the portal you can't download DLC or use it with the game for that matter. This is also, of course, granted that the content isn't already on the disks, like Tarryn hypothesized.
Back to piracy. Whats stopping the pirates from eventualy managing to rip the DLC stuff and post that all over the net? It will happen eventualy, so DLC outside of paid MMOs (like WOW) will never work as a fight against piracy.
The singularity is about to explode! Weapons are at maximum.
In a way, DLC (especially promotional launch DLC) can be seen as a sort of bonus for people who buy their games legitimately. EA were actually very open about this issue when the Sims 3 launched - registering a retail copy with EA's online Sims 3 portal gave buyers access to a significant amount of free DLC. EA later explicitly stated that the company was treating the massive pre- and post-release piracy as marketing, and that the free DLC was an incentive for legitimate buyers.
Of course, I do find this provision of "incentives" for legitimate buyers a rather tragic indictment of human integrity, but I guess that's just the way it's going down. And I guess here it's perhaps better to reward honesty than punish dishonesty - I'll take free stuff over intrusive DRM any day. EA's return to simple key-based authentication is also a good move.
But in the case of this ME2 DLC, it's mostly to thwart the secondhand market. As someone's already pointed out, publishers don't get anything out of it, and many of them are making a lot of noise on the topic lately. While I understand that from the business point of view, I do think that cheap tactics like this do nothing for the publishers' public cause.
Raven your missing the point. Tarryn said that this Cerberus Network this is a pipeline to pump the dlc into the game. Think Game for Windows live or steam, but in game. Now if you don't have the pipeline (dlc portal) downloaded onto ur xbox then you can't run any DLC. thus any pirated DLC would have to be wangled into it. And we all know what happens when a chipped xbox goes online.Originally Posted by Raven Gold
As for the PC i think it will be easier unless in embeded very very deep in the code. But still if your PC version doesn't have to DLC to use DLC all your pirated DLC is useless.
The dlc will most likely get leaked and they will find a way to get past the authorization. What they did with dao is just stop the game from connecting to the authorization server, not sure what they did to make the game think the content was authorized. This was done within a week of the game launching.
So while this is much better for the consumer as opposed to the securom issue it won't stop pirates for long. It will have more of an effect on the second hand market.
This is true. But then again... who trades mass effect anyways?!
some crazy fool who plays a game, finishes it and doesn't like to build a collection?
Play games, not platforms
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