Go **** yourself THQ

gizmo wrote: »

I'd imagine it comes down to a simple "Their system. Their rules." if Microsoft can ban your account and disable your access to your purchased content due to a Terms of Use violation then I'm quite sure Steam could too.

Doesn't mean they're right or within the law to do so though or indeed that they would enact a blanket ban. There are so many people doing it these days (buying cheaper legit keys online) that to enact a blanket ban would be counter-productive to their (Steam's) business.
The Terms of Service enacted by a lot of games companies these days, should actually be brought up and challenged as to their actual legality on an EU level and if they in turn break or hinder actual consumer laws.

Microsoft are also pretty worthless in regards taking action against piracy. Send off an email to their piracy reporting email address and you'll more than likely get a "deleted without being read" receipt a few months later. If you're lucky to get anything at all.
I've been using Technet myself for years, only paid for 1 years worth, yet I've all sorts of servers running at home along with 4 PC's running Win 7. Technically I'm probably breaking their TOS as it's not necessarily a test environment but it was cheaper to buy a standard technet sub than to purchase 4 copies of windows 7, along with all the office and server stuff I run too (mostly for learning mind, I don't fragrantly abuse the service or sell on any of my keys).

Well in fairness it didn't read like one. In that case, my bad.

Well my bad too for not being more specific in advance as to my intentions when I said that.

I don't accept some of it, I accept all of it. Primarily because I don't agree with the idea of completely blocking second hand sales.
My only qualm in all of this was what appeared to be your agreement that it was somehow justified in light of this. As I and others have said, nothing really justifies it, especially when it's obviously harming the industry which gives us the content we enjoy.

I didn't intend to come across as justifying piracy (I don't!), I just stated my opinion on what I think will happen.

Here we disagree, not on the SWTOR point though.
I honestly can't understand how gamers wouldn't want to support the industry, or just specific companies, which produce things which give them so much enjoyment.

I'm loath to support any company outside of any genuine enjoyment I might have for a game they might produce. Do that and you tend to get the shít thrown at you that was SWTOR - the amount of fanboish attitude toward that game from those defending it, and the clearly shilling reviews giving it huge scores was sickening.
Look at Blizzard now, clearly produced the best MMO ever (Wow) but they've become (perceived anyway) lazy and with a couldn't give a crap attitude. Still charging close to 50 euro to faction change and transfer your character from a dead server to something more populated (because they refuse to merge dead/dying servers). Whereas the likes of Rift (Trion) charge nothing to transfer servers and have benefited greatly from it too.
Next they go and announce effing panda's as an expansion, I still can't believe it, still think it's an April fools joke but hey, I'll probably end up enjoying it anyway when it's released then moan about it again a few months later.

Of course, it works the other way too. I refuse to buy an Ubisoft PC game with their horrific online DRM, my protest is simply not playing it.

I agree. I bought the keys online for Settlers 7 and Anno 2070, 20 euro each at the time if I remember rightly. Otherwise I wouldn't have bothered. I done that rather than pirate even though apparently the pirated versions of both are better than the legit versions

This is what I'm talking about, people simply giving a **** about good games.

I do to some degree. I paid full whack for Skyrim simply because I thought the devs done a fantastic job. Could easily have got the key online cheaper but didn't.

On what basis could they force them to lower prices? At the very most, all they could do is force them to harmonize their prices across different regions.
Well, with regard to Russia, there's little the EU could do since it's not actually in the EU. But again, this is simple economics at play, not some publisher conspiracy. It's not about being able to afford to sell the product at that price, it's about what price it is possible to sell it at.

Competition law. Price fixing. breaking or hindering free trade agreements. Abusing consumer laws. Intentionally charging customers in one region more than another, even though the products delivered are done so digitally so no extra costs involved could be justified.
Why should people in Ireland have to pay 50 euro for a game when people in Russia only for 20 euro ?
The argument that it's such a lower price in Russia because it won't sell for a higher price is a weak one and just stinks of simply "we charge people in Ireland more just because we can and they still pay it, lol".
At the very least it's morally unfair and I cannot see any valid justification for same.

Well the thing is, the publishers themselves wouldn't be removing the second hand market. It would be done on a console level so you'd be free to sell them on, they just couldn't be played.

Hence why I think piracy will win out and be seen as a better consumer friendly option. Not saying it's right, not condoning it, I'm just putting the point forward.

It will also be seen as a huge challenge to crack such restrictions on the consoles that enact such - who will have the first all defeating crack out and how many days will it take them to do it.
Again, it'll end up that the general consumer is the one to suffer because they'll still have to put up with the restrictions while pirates (from what I'm led to believe) will probably be able to play the games with no DVD's needed, straight from an ISO and possibly also have private servers to play on for FPS type games thus negating the need for console controlled multiplayer access.

I just think the whole thing is a self defeating cause as it currently stands.
Similar I feel to the music industry. The gaming industry are going down the same stupid road and they'll make the same stupid mistakes.
They should embrace the technology and changing times along with available changing access methods to same, rather than clam up, round up the wagons and shout NEVER NEVER NEVER... It doesn't work.

Closing down and shutting out the rental and second hand market could also conceivably be considered anti competitive if challenged strongly at an EU level as they are or would be in effect destroying a very large competitive market just to suit their own personal business model as they see it.

Another option also would be a console maker led or developer led trade in and swap shop type set up. Driven by and led by actual gamers, where no massive profits are made, other than that to pay for the service and provision. I say that because I also feel game shops are absolutely creaming gamers by what they charge for second hand games against what they actually pay gamers for them.
If I sell Skyrim for 5 euro and see it then for sale in the same shop second hand for 30 euro, that's complete and utter bullshít, greedy pigs for doing that.
What if I could go on xbox live for instance and put the game up for swap after say a 3 month time frame has passed ? You send the game in to the service, it's tested and Q&A's to be in good working order and then advertised for swap.
You go on the service, see your game has been accepted and check against who wants that game compared to what you want, find a match, click a button and both games are swapped and sent out to the respective gamers.
Charge for the service, 5 euro each or something to cover postage costs, continued operation of the service and provision of same to keep it going for everyone.

There we go.

If anyone uses that idea above you better send me a few games now :mad: