Why PC Gaming Gets Away With It

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aaaaand

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Can't +rep you, as I have to spread my lovin' around first, so +1, well said. Kind of what I wanted to say as well; we've seen media and services die before, and in spite of that, it's still alive somewhere. New movies aren't released on betamax, but you do still find players and people who love the medium enough to use it. Likewise vinyl, and DOS-based games. We've even seen MMO's die, but live on after death, like Star Wars Galaxies.

It's inevitable.

I do, however, disagree slightly about calling what you described piracy, but I think that may be getting out of the bounds of this topic.

 

[Lycanthrope]

Can't +rep you, as I have to spread my lovin' around first, so +1, well said. Kind of what I wanted to say as well; we've seen media and services die before, and in spite of that, it's still alive somewhere. New movies aren't released on betamax, but you do still find players and people who love the medium enough to use it. Likewise vinyl, and DOS-based games. We've even seen MMO's die, but live on after death, like Star Wars Galaxies.

It's inevitable.

I do, however, disagree slightly about calling what you described piracy, but I think that may be getting out of the bounds of this topic.

Haha... Thanks and I know what you mean but that will always "officially" been seen as piracy. I like to think of it as the media we loved living on for new generations to play.

But that's also why I really dig GOG--it makes old games affordable, they adapt the games for modern operating systems and they give us a small way to show that there is still demand for many of those titles.

I wish that consoles had a similar service but that's what I kind of hope we'll see with a greater interest in online distribution and cloud computing: that the games we buy still being playable in the future.

 

[StaggerLee]

I have to disagree with you



I understand your point of view but you need to remember that not all media is distributed equally. In other words, you might have a permanent online library of music available to you through Spotify, but you may instead decide to buy and download music for offline (detached from the service) use and in which case you'd use a different provider such as iTunes or some other web-based service.

Similarly, to touch on Jim Sterling's video in the OP, you have multiple services available for online distribution for PC through which you can download games without DRM (read: better than a disc) such as GOG and flexibility is one of the many advantages to the PC.

The only difference in this regard with consoles is that you ultimately rely on the manufacturer (Sony/Microsoft) to keep their online services going. But you also rely on their consoles and, in that way, you are tied to that manufacturer and their lifespan however which way you look at it.

Dare I bring the word 'piracy' into this discussion? I must. You surely know about ROMs and console emulation. A console's lifespan reaches its end, who cares, whip out the emulator and voilà, life goes on. Similarly, through piracy, you are bound to find any number of disc images of games that you might not be able to buy any more for console.

Again, online saves the day. It might not be legal but if it exists, a functional copy is out there--it's the dream of anyone who is afraid ever "losing" their content because of a service being discontinued.

It's also important to remember that a service won't one day simply disappear and certainly not without warning. There will also always be others to take its place (read: buy up the service and continue it). This is what happened with Stardock's Impulse service when it became GameStop's brand new digital distribution platform.

Online is better and I definitely believe that it is the best future for all forms of media whether for convenience, longevity, quality and availability or just because it gives you more freedom to choose.

My point is that with a console you will be tied to the manufacturer whether you buy their discs or use an equivalent online service. If the console or your disc breaks one day at the end of its lifespan then that's it, game over. You'll be playing it on a PC with an emulator and a pirated ROM

However, if a manufacturer focuses on an online environment you may be able to play those games way into the future regardless of which generation of console they release because of the probability of cloud computing and digital ownership on a single account across generations. The services would be unlikely to ever be terminated since they would almost certainly bolster their income through subscription or through continued success of their games/platforms.

I do agree with you on the issue that a downloadable copy that is DRM-free of any type of media is better than a physical copy. If this is the way that online media distribution goes, then yes you are right, online is better.

Unfortunately, I have a more cynical impression of the intentions of the holders of those media rights, whether it be for games, music or videos. I don't foresee a future where we will be able to download anything and everything to store locally on your own hard drive. Media publishers have shown time and time again that if that can get away with licensing out their products instead of selling it, they will. So when a stable, fast internet connection is finally ubiquitous, media publishers of all kinds will turn to cloud-based distribution. This is effectively not distribution at all as they keep everything on their own servers. This is future I have a problem with as they remove any control we have over the product we bought.

Saying that we can rely on piracy in the worst case is not a legitimate argument as a judicial court will not buy the "I bought it before and now I can't use it, so I pirated it argument". It's not a defence. Additionally, I don't think that you can bank on any online service remaining available in perpetuity, especially not citing the reason that "someone will probably buy them up". That won't necessarily happen and even if it does, what makes you think that buyer of that online service will still think that it's profitable to support your old games? And if publishers or distribution platforms do decide to support old games through subscriptions as you suggest they might do, then we are effectively paying for the game twice. Why is that a good thing? If you had a physical copy or DRM-free copy, then you wouldn't have to subscribe and pay again for something you already own.

The point is that if any media distributors wrest control of the media that we have paid for from us, then we are in for a bleak future in terms of being able to use that media as we want to and when we want to. I don't think that the issue here is whether online distribution in an ideal world is better, it's whether online distribution is better in this world that you and I live in. I don't think that is the case.

 

[jasong]

The thing about PC games is, they can have a much longer sales lifespan than console games because they exist digitally. So the long tail effect kicks in, where they are willing to drop their prices and still getting sales in a year, 2 years etc down the line. People who weren't willing to pay $60 will pay $20, and to be honest it doesn't make that much of a difference if you're not playing the newest games on the market. Whereas console games are fighting for the same shelf space that gets replenished very quickly; and they never have time to let the pricing drop experimentally. It can make a huge difference to the monetisation of a game.

 

[Avatar]

Media publishers have shown time and time again that if that can get away with licensing out their products instead of selling it, they will.

But this is already the case, and always has been.. You don't own any of the software you're using (unless you wrote it yourself), you're licensing it. The distribution model and licensing model are independent of each other in this case.

Saying that we can rely on piracy in the worst case is not a legitimate argument as a judicial court will not buy the "I bought it before and now I can't use it, so I pirated it argument". It's not a defence.

But it is.. Piracy is the colloquial term for copyright infringement. Copyright typically has a clause in there, called the fair-use clause. If you own a license to Circus Charlie from buying a cartridge for your NES in the early 90's, you have every right to use that ROM in any way that you see fit, including in an emulator on your pc. Typically for the emulators the copyrighted part that can cause some trouble is the BIOS of the console that it is emulating.. I remember a couple of PSX emu's being shut down on those grounds. But use of the copyrighted BIOS solely to use the licence you own falls squarely in the realm of fair-use.