Sony patents pre-owned games block

Zero-Cool · 03-01-2013 12:19pm #1

Sony Computer Entertainment has filed a patent for technology designed to suppress pre-owned game sales.

Bit of a mad story that sounds like PS4 will have place a block on pre-owned games. This may not happen at all but the patent doesn't sound good.

Even though I mostly buy new games these days, this restriction is a bit severe and would push me towards Gabes Steam Console instead.

If this was to happen, would it completely put you off a PS4 or would you even mind?

I like the line

Employees of studios including Crytek and DICE have said they're open to such a move.

. Of course they are haha!

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/384922/sony-patents-pre-owned-games-block/

Nody · 03-01-2013 12:26pm

Well the problem is legal implementation (i.e. it would most likely be against EU law) but there is a much easier route around it with the use of codes. Sell the game for 50 EUR with a online/full access pass for activation that's tied to your account. Next guy picking it up can only play a limited part of the game if they don't fork out 25 EUR on the pass; problem solved (as far as gaming companies are concerned).

Mr E · 03-01-2013 12:30pm

Nody wrote: »

Well the problem is legal implementation (i.e. it would most likely be against EU law) but there is a much easier route around it with the use of codes. Sell the game for 50 EUR with a online/full access pass for activation that's tied to your account. Next guy picking it up can only play a limited part of the game if they don't fork out 25 EUR on the pass; problem solved (as far as gaming companies are concerned).

Yep, then all you have to do is stop gamestop from selling second hand games for €3 less than retail (in which case they'd work out more expensive second hand!)

saiint · 03-01-2013 12:31pm

Nody wrote: »

Well the problem is legal implementation (i.e. it would most likely be against EU law) but there is a much easier route around it with the use of codes. Sell the game for 50 EUR with a online/full access pass for activation that's tied to your account. Next guy picking it up can only play a limited part of the game if they don't fork out 25 EUR on the pass; problem solved (as far as gaming companies are concerned).

i hope you never become a ceo of sony :pac:

super_furry · 03-01-2013 12:34pm

I won't be buying any console that prevents me from reselling games I buy. I think EU law could make the whole thing moot in a hurry anyway.

Nody · 03-01-2013 12:38pm

Mr E wrote: »

Yep, then all you have to do is stop gamestop from selling second hand games for €3 less than retail (in which case they'd work out more expensive second hand!)

Well the gaming companies complaint is they get no money; if a second hand game will result in 25 EUR for each sale I'm quite certain they would not be unhappy by comparison

.

And saiint; they could never afford me :pac:.

super_furry · 03-01-2013 12:41pm

Games devs always seem to ignore the fact that nearly all second hand game trade-ins go towards buying new games. Remove this ability and I think you'd actually see a drop off in new game sales.

Julez · 03-01-2013 12:44pm

super_furry wrote: »

Games devs always seem to ignore the fact that nearly all second hand game trade-ins go towards buying new games. Remove this ability and I think you'd actually see a drop off in new game sales.

What if this led to the prices of new games coming down? Probably wouldn't, but if it did.

Penn · 03-01-2013 12:46pm

super_furry wrote: »

I won't be buying any console that prevents me from reselling games I buy. I think EU law could make the whole thing moot in a hurry anyway.

I think the whole "code for online pass" thing is a happy medium. If someone buys a second hand game for €20, chances are they wouldn't have bought it for €50.

I see second hand games the same way I see downloading music for free. If I download an album of a band I never heard of and like it, I'd go see them in concert (where bands make their real money). If I couldn't get the album for free, I probably wouldn't pay for it and so would never see them. Same with second hand games. I bought Red Dead Redemption second hand because I didn't think I'd like it and wouldn't have paid full price for it. Now, I will purchase any new game which has "Red Dead..." in the title for full price.

Same has happened with other game franchises. Got Madden 10 second hand and have since bought Madden 11, 12 and 13 at release.

Second hand games which have been out for a while and are €15-30 (rather than second hand games which are almost the same price as retail) are surely helping some game franchises because it can build an audience for the next release.

hooradiation · 03-01-2013 12:52pm

sheehy83 wrote: »

Bit of a mad story that sounds like PS4 will have place a block on pre-owned games. This may not happen at all but the patent doesn't sound good.

Even though I mostly buy new games these days, this restriction is a bit severe and would push me towards Gabes Steam Console instead.

If this was to happen, would it completely put you off a PS4 or would you even mind?

I like the line . Of course they are haha!

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/384922/sony-patents-pre-owned-games-block/

Patenting something and implementing it are two totally different things, but please - do continue.

grizzly · 03-01-2013 12:52pm

I don't think this would lead to prices coming down on new games, but I'd be happy for more money to be available to fund new IPs (or even just making better quality sequels).

Tij da feen · 03-01-2013 12:54pm

Julez wrote: »

What if this led to the prices of new games coming down? Probably wouldn't, but if it did.

I think that probably one of the more serious issues that the companies aren't tackling. Games on consoles are still retailing at way to high of a price new and some games don't seem to drop in price at all. If Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft actually used their online stores more effectively with sales they would see much more interest and also these games can't be traded in. I know on Xbox Live that there are games that are around 3 years old which are still selling for around €30 and the DLC is usually quite close, if not the same price, as when it was released.

I guess I'm just noticing this coming from PC but new games are a lot cheaper soon after release on PC through GreenManGaming or other CD-Key sites, and of course Steam Sales for older games. If the companies were utilising their online stores the second-hand market wouldn't be as much of an issue.

Zillah · 03-01-2013 12:58pm

saiint wrote: »

i hope you never become a ceo of sony :pac:

I guarantee you that the Sony CEO and his entire cabal of executives are actively planning things like this and worse all the time. They only stop when someone in legal tells them they'll be fined or someone in marketing tells them it will back fire.

Incidentally, this is how every corporation works.

Dravokivich · 03-01-2013 12:59pm

super_furry wrote: »

Games devs always seem to ignore the fact that nearly all second hand game trade-ins go towards buying new games. Remove this ability and I think you'd actually see a drop off in new game sales.

Not really as much as you'd expect. the problem is with the stores making an incredible amount of money consistently reselling the same product at an incredibly high markup.

For example, going by gamestop I'd always see offers by the doors along the lines of trade in 3/4 games to get a new release for 3euro. Those are 3/4 games they are going to resell for 40euro each at least. Selling off second hand goods at close to the rate of a new release does not increase the money going to devs through new sales. the game someone gets on a trade in, will be about 50 - 60, but gamesstop get 100 - 130 worth of stock to resell.

I think the console market is absolutley nuts due to the nature of 2nd hand games and have stopped buying consoles games at all myself. A few of my mates too.

the_syco · 03-01-2013 1:16pm

super_furry wrote: »

Games devs always seem to ignore the fact that nearly all second hand game trade-ins go towards buying new games. Remove this ability and I think you'd actually see a drop off in new game sales.

2nd hand trading is legal pirating; the game devs don't get the money, but some dodgy middleman does.

TheDoc · 03-01-2013 1:36pm

There is a common misconception here. The issue is not with all second hand trading. A publisher and studio has no issue with someone buying an old title second hand. EA arn't worried about you going out and picking up Fifa09 for €5.

The issue is with the increased marketing, pushing second hand sales. This is typically noticable everywhere, when a new game is released, the store will offer you a "good"trade in value, should you return the back , trade it in, within a certain timeframe. This is what irks publishers.

So you buy a game for €50, and the offer is if you trade it in within 2 weeks, you'll get €40 voucher for that store. Sounds a blinder for you, but not for the publisher.

While the publisher will get a cut from the original RRP, the retailer will give you a voucher for between €35-40 during the trade in offer. They then re-list this game, on the shelf, for possibly €45.

When a game is fresh in the mind, people pick it up. Retailers are quiet aware that a lot of consumers won't rush to buy first release day, but wait a week or two, to read reviews and feedback, but also to try pickup the game cheaper second hand.

So while the original game is sold at €50 on launch day, by week three, that one copy has probably generated €95 for the retailer, with €45 of that being their profit, entirely, thanks to the second hand sale.

This is what has the publishers raging, and that is why one of the talked about controls is a timing license, which I personally think is much better. A game will come with a timing license, so that once activated on your console, it will be linked to your console alone for a set amount of time, to which after that can then be released into the second hand market.

I never traded in console games because I was aware of how the profiteering of second hand games works from my time in the industry, and how the consumer gains little benefit. I prefer to trade my games through personal second hand sales through ebay, adverts etc.

I'm not going to back the retailers here, I'm backing the publishers. The retailers have employed a bit of a sneaky tac to generate massive revenue from titles, whilst only paying a fraction of the worth. If publishers were entitled to a fraction of a second hand sale, you'd see second hand sales in retailers dissapear overnight.

So dont kid yourself thinking that the issue is with older titles, its pretty much JUST the marketing campaigns that offer trade in specials on new titles, and this is where Publishers are losing out on massive revenue for new titles.

Zombrex · 03-01-2013 2:01pm

Well the issue for the game developers is that new release trade ins turns the system from retail into rental.

If you buy games from publishers for actual rental the rental store pays a huge amount more than the retail price based on the idea that they will be renting it out over a period of time and thus using it longer and making more money. This is true of movies as well, and why rental stores like Xtra Vision get annoyed when you don't bring back the movie. Its not like they can just pop into HMV and pick up another copy for €15, the copy you have lost down the back of your hifi system actually cost Xtra Vision about €150 euro, the games even more.

The new release second hand market is away for retailers to basically act like rental outlets without paying the money that publishers expect in return. It costs them a fraction of the price of a rental unit and when you return it back and they sell it on its profit all the way.

deathrider · 03-01-2013 2:04pm

There were rumours early last year of Microsoft having the same trick up their sleeve for their next Xbox. Complete dick-move of either company does this, in my opinion.

Cienciano · 03-01-2013 2:12pm

Nody wrote: »

Well the gaming companies complaint is they get no money; if a second hand game will result in 25 EUR for each sale I'm quite certain they would not be unhappy by comparison .

And saiint; they could never afford me :pac:.

Hopefully car manufacturers don't have the same idea!
Surely if you buy the game it's yours? Same with CD's, DVD's or anything? Or is reselling against some copyright laws?
I can remember almost all of the above used to have notes about not even being allowed to lend!

ShadowHearth · 03-01-2013 2:15pm

I don't really care about second hand market as I play mostly pc. And if I do buy something for console that is older I just find it online for less then GameStop sales second hand.

If Sony will do this, then it will destroy the only benefit it had for me as traditional console: taking my mortal kombat, tekken, resident evil game to my friends place fire it up for a session with drinks and BBQ.

I don't know if such thing would put me off from ps4, because I am already used to PC system, but it would put me off just because it is such a dick move. If the games will still be higher priced with this DRM then not a hope I will be buying any next gen console. For seem money I will just build myself a PC for TV and use steam big picture with controller.

gizmo · 03-01-2013 2:41pm

super_furry wrote: »

Games devs always seem to ignore the fact that nearly all second hand game trade-ins go towards buying new games. Remove this ability and I think you'd actually see a drop off in new game sales.

And who buys the games you've just traded in? As TheDoc said above, publishers don't care about you trading in your games and fueling future retail purchases, they care about the person who walks into a GAME or Gamestop and is told by the cashier they can save a fiver on a new purchase of Borderlands if they get a second hand copy only 3 days after release.

As for whether we'd see a net drop in new game sales, I don't believe it for a second. People will not stop playing video games, they'll just buy less video games however these copies will be new thus balancing out the theoretical drop which would occur without second hand sales fueling such new sales.

Of course, I certainly don't agree with banning them outright either.

ShadowHearth wrote: »

If Sony will do this, then it will destroy the only benefit it had for me as traditional console: taking my mortal kombat, tekken, resident evil game to my friends place fire it up for a session with drinks and BBQ.

It would hopefully be tied to your account which you could just sign into on your mates machine and play away as you can now on the current consoles.

johnny_ultimate · 03-01-2013 2:54pm

I hate the idea of second hand sales of commercially viable titles - personally, I find it hard to justify buying a pre-owned copy of a game that is currently in print. I'd go as far as to say the practice is actually hurting creativity in gaming, as publishers desperately try to add fat to games that don't need it in order to persuade people to hang on to a copy. That gamers tend to trade in or buy second hand copies of shorter single-player games is a particular cause for concern.

However, there is one horrible side effect of blocking pre-owned games: its not future proof. If a SNES or PS1 was blocked, than collectors and enthusiasts would suddenly have a very limited way to access countless long since out-of-print titles. As gaming becomes more focused on digital distribution, we do need to re-evaluate how we 'own' games (that reinterpretation is currently ongoing with the likes of Steam, and will be interesting to see how next-gen consoles handle it given many of us now have vast digital libraries), and the concerns associated with servers going offline etc... But as long as there's physical media, a pre-owned block is undoubtedly a short-term benefit for developers and publishers (and, I would argue, we the players), but further down the line problematic for gamers themselves. If there was some way to 'remove' the block once a game was completely commercially unavailable, well that would be a potentially worthwhile venture.

gizmo · 03-01-2013 3:05pm

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

I hate the idea of second hand sales of commercially viable titles - personally, I find it hard to justify buying a pre-owned copy of a game that is currently in print. I'd go as far as to say the practice is actually hurting creativity in gaming, as publishers desperately try to add fat to games that don't need it in order to persuade people to hang on to a copy. That gamers tend to trade in or buy second hand copies of shorter single-player games is a particular cause for concern.

*cough*

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

However, there is one horrible side effect of blocking pre-owned games: its not future proof. If a SNES or PS1 was blocked, than collectors and enthusiasts would suddenly have a very limited way to access countless long since out-of-print titles. As gaming becomes more focused on digital distribution, we do need to re-evaluate how we 'own' games, and the concerns associated with servers going offline etc... But as long as there's physical media, a pre-owned block is undoubtedly a short-term benefit for developers and publishers (and, I would argue, we the players), but further down the line problematic for gamers themselves. If there was some way to 'remove' the block once a game was completely commercially unavailable, well that would be a potentially worthwhile venture.

Bingo.

As long as games remain physical, they'll have a limited production run and shelf life. To remove second hand sales of any sort would mean different people wouldn't be able to experience these games at all down the line. That's certainly not a situation I'd like to see happen, not only for the "retro" aspect but hell, it's tough even finding older games at retail this generation.

The move to digital distribution raises even more issues though. With the games no longer in physical from, how does one gauge depreciation and how it should be valued over time? It's one of my biggest worries with regard to that EU ruling, there would be literally no difference between someone owning and playing a game bought digitally on launch day to someone who did so a week later. Combine that with the ease of digital distribution itself and you can see why I'd advocate publishers and platform holders being more proactive in solving the problem in a manner which is beneficial to everyone in the long term rather than taking the music and movie industry approach of sticking their head in the sands.

marco_polo · 03-01-2013 3:07pm

The problem with the mass second hand market is that it does create an unusual environment whereby, within a few months of release, a developers will, for all intents and purposes, have sold almost every single new copy of their game that are ever going to. There is no longer term revenue stream, which means that a game needs to sell big and fast to make a decent return, this surely has to impact the risks that developers are willing to take with new IPs etc.

However as the TheDoc says the problem really isn't the end user selling their games, but the retailerd relentless pushing of nearly new titles. So it would be absolutely ludicrous for any proposed solution should be to permanently prevent the end user from doing so.

ED E · 03-01-2013 4:05pm

marco_polo wrote: »

The problem with the mass second hand market is that it does create an unusual environment whereby, within a few months of release, a developers will, for all intents and purposes, have sold almost every single new copy of their game that are ever going to. There is no longer term revenue stream, which means that a game needs to sell big and fast to make a decent return, this surely has to impact the risks that developers are willing to take with new IPs etc.

This is why, in my eyes, the market is going to turn to F2P in a big way in the next few years.

K.O.Kiki · 03-01-2013 5:24pm

I've got a better idea:

Make games that are worth keeping.

gizmo · 03-01-2013 5:47pm

K.O.Kiki wrote: »

I've got a better idea:

Make games that are worth keeping.

If one was to use the retention rate of a modern game as a measure of how good it is then the Call of Duty series is the best series of all time.

Jamie Starr · 03-01-2013 5:56pm

I think this trend is really worrying in video-game culture. It is pretty bizarre that you pay for a piece of machinery, pay to make it your property, but currently the makers of the property want the power to define what you do with your property. You want to stop retailers from selling their property and paying to buy it back? As a developer/publisher, you develop/publish the game and get paid for it. That's your work, and you're rightly entitled to reimbursement for it. A retailer buys and sells, that's their business. They should be reimbursed for the work they do, which involves selling the games to players and offering them incentives to trade them in.

Pah. Pah I say!*

This has nothing to do with the fact that I bought Hitman: Absolution for €32, traded it in for €30 store credit and got Far Cry 3, all in all spending €32 to own two games. Nothing to do with it!

AlmightyCushion · 03-01-2013 6:01pm

sheehy83 wrote: »

Even though I mostly buy new games these days, this restriction is a bit severe and would push me towards Gabes Steam Console instead.

You'd have the same restriction with the steambox if it ever gets released.

m0nsterie · 03-01-2013 6:05pm

Nody wrote: »

Well the problem is legal implementation (i.e. it would most likely be against EU law) but there is a much easier route around it with the use of codes. Sell the game for 50 EUR with a online/full access pass for activation that's tied to your account. Next guy picking it up can only play a limited part of the game if they don't fork out 25 EUR on the pass; problem solved (as far as gaming companies are concerned).

This is already done though, right?
The Little Big Planet Karting I got in my Christmas stocking came with an online pass. I couldn't play online until I entered in the code on the pass.

So if I were to now sell the game, the next person could not use my code and would have to purchase a new code via the Playstation Store if they wanted to play online.

Retr0gamer · 03-01-2013 6:07pm

the_syco wrote: »

2nd hand trading is legal pirating; the game devs don't get the money, but some dodgy middleman does.

Actually no it's not. Once you buy something new the publisher legally has no right to make money from the sale of that copy of the copyrighted work and you are legally allowed to sell it. They can charge for the use of servers but selling access to the game itself if sold second hand is illegal in at the very least the US and the EU. It's how copyright law has always worked.

I read recently that only 10% of game sales are second hand, it's just money grabbing by game studios to try and scrap as many pennys as they can.

Sony patents pre-owned games block

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