From the people who brought you disc insurance...

johnny_ultimate

Download insurance! And only for 18 months! Wow.

Hopefully this is a small blip in terms of digital media - going forward, it's pretty vital that there'll be access to your game as long as the servers are up and running (what happens after they stop running is another issue...).

I can't imagine Steam are too concerned about Gamespot as a viable digital competitor right now :pac:

Fanny Cradock

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

Download insurance! And only for 18 months! Wow.

Hopefully this is a small blip in terms of digital media - going forward, it's pretty vital that there'll be access to your game as long as the servers are up and running (what happens after they stop running is another issue...).

I can't imagine Steam are too concerned about Gamespot as a viable digital competitor right now :pac:

I'm just going to toss a thought grenade in here so bear with me.

Going forward, will will have to drill-down into this paradigm shift. It's clear that Gamespot have seen some low-hanging fruit and decided to max the envelope to with respect to offering game insurance. The hoped result of this blue sky thinking is that they will leverage their position in the market. Still, the devil is in the granularity, and their manoeuvring may yet be a mute decision given the success of their counterparts, Steam.

Going forward...

grizzly

This will put a lot of pressure on Steam. Now everyone is going to be like "hey, where's my download insurance!?"

RobertFoster

EA did something similar when Spore launched. Instead of having unlimited downloads for 6 months after purchase, you could spend an extra $6.99 for 2 years access.

From a servers-are-expensive point of view, I can kind of understand. But from a consumer pov, I'd avoid using those services.

Doctor DooM

Fanny Cradock wrote: »

I'm just going to toss a thought grenade in here so bear with me.

Going forward, will will have to drill-down into this paradigm shift. It's clear that Gamespot have seen some low-hanging fruit and decided to max the envelope to with respect to offering game insurance. The hoped result of this blue sky thinking is that they will leverage their position in the market. Still, the devil is in the granularity, and their manoeuvring may yet be a mute decision given the success of their counterparts, Steam.

Going forward...

Indeed, clearly they synergised with thier business partners to optimise the potential end user experience of those partners.

stevenmu

Any bets on how long it takes them to figure out some way to do second hand downloads and make a fortune off it?

Penn

I'm just waiting for the day when I'm asked to buy Browsing Insurance when I walk in. And if I don't buy it, they throw stuff at you

johnny_ultimate

stevenmu wrote: »

Any bets on how long it takes them to figure out some way to do second hand downloads and make a fortune off it?

It isn't too far off: http://www.plusxp.com/2011/04/digital-download-trade-ins-a-good-idea/

I suppose ITunes - the biggest digital download service - has super strict DRM and one time downloads, so it's hardly unheard of. But offering future downloads as an optional extra seems to be screwing the customer over, when its big competitor offers pretty much unlimited downloads. I bought Half-Life 2 how many years ago, and can still download it to my PC whenever I want. If I bought it from gamestop, it'd have a half-life of a year and a half.

We're not necessarily entitled to extra downloads, the way we're not entitled to an extra hard copy of ours is broken. And yet, given the way most companies are working - including Microsoft and Sony - it seems like Gamestop trying to screw over those who might be ignorant of how things work. I guess the other argument is said customers deserve it!

Drakar

Just FYI, you can download things from iTunes multiple times (eg if you delete it to make space, or upgrade your phone), and even onto your multiple devices (5 devices per account or something).

johnny_ultimate

Drakar wrote: »

Just FYI, you can download things from iTunes multiple times (eg if you delete it to make space, or upgrade your phone), and even onto your multiple devices (5 devices per account or something).

That's with apps, and definitely a good thing, but I'm fairly sure with music (and I'm open to correction here!) it's one time only. Possibly more the music industries doing though, as they're notoriously pro-DRM.

Potential-Monke

I'm confused, why is there insurance for it?

Kiith

Potential-Monke wrote: »

I'm confused, why is there insurance for it?

So Gamestop can squeeze even more money from you.

subway

but if 100000 people by a game that is 45gb in size that means they will have to store 4500000GB or 4.5PB on their servers. thats a massive amount of storage. AND SOMEONE HAS TO PAY FOR IT!!11!
obviously if only they could figure out a way to allow users to "digitally copy" the software when they need to download it, instead of physically removing the data from the server they could save some space, but thats just sci-fi talk.

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

subway wrote: »

but if 100000 people by a game that is 45gb in size that means they will have to store 4500000GB or 4.5PB on their servers. thats a massive amount of storage. AND SOMEONE HAS TO PAY FOR IT!!11!
obviously if only they could figure out a way to allow users to "digitally copy" the software when they need to download it, instead of physically removing the data from the server they could save some space, but thats just sci-fi talk.

I had a pretty rude and downright mean post half typed out before I actually stopped to read the bottom part of your post
gg

grames_bond

Doctor DooM wrote: »

Indeed, clearly they synergised with thier business partners to optimise the potential end user experience of those partners.

Let's not get half pregnant here - we have to put our ducks in a row and get our house of cards in order before we can jump to conclusions vis a vis the situation going forward. In effect a brainstorming session should take place to see what sticks and If we look at it from a helicopter view coupled with the SEO research available to us we will be able to get a better discourse going in relation to the paridigm shift occuring.

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

grames_bond wrote: »

Let's not get half pregnant here - we have to put our ducks in a row and get our house of cards in order before we can jump to conclusions vis a vis the situation going forward. In effect a brainstorming session should take place to see what sticks and If we look at it from a helicopter view coupled with the SEO research available to us we will be able to get a better discourse going in relation to the paridigm shift occuring.

I don't care that you're joking, I still want to hurt you after reading that.

v3ttel

http://i.imgur.com/z7OEl.jpg

Your first mistake as I see it, is choosing to buy something from Gamestop.

subway

the question that i have to ask is that are they actually going to stop "stocking" games after a while?
one of the best points of these services is that if i want to play a game from 5 years ago, its still there and i just have to find it. the game has a "never ending" revenue cycle in that it never becomes more cost effective to replace it with something else.

so these idiots are basically saying "hehe, we have a copy of the game on our server (you could buy it if you like) but we revoke your access after 18 months"
i honestly cant see how this is workable, the license for the software is perpetual (does not end, can be transferred) if gamestop revoke your access, do they also revoke your license to play (timebombed) as the 2 would have to be linked...

Antar Bolaeisk

The redownload costs surely couldn't be that much. Since I first started using Steam I've only redownloaded a couple of games whereas most of them are downloaded once and that's it.

Although you do get those weird people who like to re-install their game more than five times a month and then complain when the draconian DRM kicks in and won't let them re-install a sixth time, instead making them wait until next month.

wayne040576

It's about 2 years behind their competitors. EA did the same 2 years ago and I think Direct2Drive did as well.

I wonder if they'll push this onto Impulse as well now that they own it....