Major Publishers Silent On Xbox One Used Game Policies [UPDATED]

It almost seems like MS built the DRM support due to demand from major publishers and now that there's backlash, the pubs are hanging MS out to dry.

@huey2k2: how's that working out for you?

@huey2k2: Do you still think eveyone is ignorant?

Well for all you people saying sony would just do the same thing well microsoft is fucked because sony is still a gaming console not a drm machine

Man! I think I'll just stick to the PC then & wait for the lowest price before shelling out any cash to these money-grubbing dickheads.

We're clawing at crumbs under the table anyways. I'd like to manage my own rights thank you very much.

Bhahahaahaha!

Years these boxes have been in the making and they didn't think to figure this shit out before now, what a bunch of fuzzy gnomes.

I actually heard a lot of good things about Origin customer support. More than Steam. But I guess EA is more lenient because they want nothing but a good reputation to catch up to Steam.

Either way, I could - as an experiment - contact Steam and ask them how I can sell a certain copy of a game.

Would be interesting to see if anybody has tried to resell their games and talked to Valve/Google/Apple support about it? I know EA, despite their terrible reputation, let you do this. They didn't make it easy, but you could contact EA support and say you wanted to resell a game you had linked to your EA Downloader (pre-Origin) account, and they'd deauthenticate you so the key could be reused on another account.

I don't know if they still allow this on Origin, I guess it's possible they've seen the law isn't enforced and stopped doing that.

Would you mind sharing what it was they were asking specifically?

How was the tone of the e-mail? Were they asking you whether they should become an 'official' retailer for their used stuff? Or was it more like: should we even offer any of their stuff at all?

I got a really interesting email from Redbox asking for my opinion on this stuff in an online survey thing. I haven't filled it out yet but I really thought it was fascinating that Redbox was trying to get out in front of this and get the public to back them up this early on.

@golguin: Do you live in Europe? There are laws, but they are not enforced.

I live in the Netherlands and by law I am allowed to resell any of the digital purchases I made. That being apps on my phone, games on Steam and so on. As you undoubtedly know, I actually cannot sell anything as mobile OS stores prevent this and Steam doesn't allow it either.

The law even states that the company is prohibited from interfering with the resell of digital products between consumers. In effect this means they are not allowed to say you only have the license of use and cannot resell it. The law says that providing a license in exchange for money is in effect the selling of a license which may be resold by the one who bought it. It explicitly states that the one who provided the license may notinterfere with this practice.

Microsoft can very easily do this. This law exists over a year and nothing has been done to enforce it. I don't see why Apple, Google and Valve can oppose this law but Microsoft couldn't.

“We are currently discussing within SEGA policies relating to the new generation of consoles. As soon as these have been agreed upon with all concerned partners we will make the information public.”

Well you are clearly in the minority of people who aren't affected/don't care about these new anti-consumer policies. When a person purchases any other item they are able to do whatever they want with it.

This whole gray area that lobbying groups have been able to carve out for themselves under the guise of a "license" may hold some power in the US, but it sure as hell doesn't work in Europe. I wonder how Microsoft plans to deal with the laws in other countries that actually protect consumer rights.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine

"However, in Europe, the European Court of Justice ruled on July 3, 2012, that it is indeed permissible to resell software licenses even if the digital good has been downloaded directly from the Internet, and that the first-sale doctrine applied whenever software was originally sold to a customer for an unlimited amount of time, as such sale involves a transfer of ownership, thus prohibiting any software maker from preventing the resale of their software by any of their legitimate owners.^[3][4][5]"

One major point that is often overlooked regarding the sales of used games is that there are also INDIRECT sales of new games as a result of the used game market. Many people sell used games and put that money towards buying NEW games. This is difficult to measure and quantify in hard numbers but a certain percentage of new games are purchased as a result of used game sales that otherwise wouldn't have occurred. Take away used game sales and the potential "benefits" might not outweigh the losses and cripple the market in other, unforseen ways (people may buy fewer games than average since they can't get a return on their old ones and thus have less money to spend). Only time will tell.

Name one other company that sells you a shockingly high powered computer at a significant loss, with the explicit intent that you will buy games so that they can eventually make their money back.

I'm not trying to make Microsoft into some sort of victim here, but the argument that you're paying $400 for a system and therefore deserve complete control is bullshit when it's costing them AT LEAST that much just to manufacture and sell the damn thing, even with all of their intricate supply lines and production abilities. They need to sell games to make money, and they need to please publishers to sell games. Since publishers see piracy and used games as the devil (regardless of whether or not that is accurate), MS needed to do everything in their power to curtail both of those avenues. Is their solution great, or even good? Are there better ways to do it that would be more customer friendly? Of course. Will their solution work? I can't see how it wouldn't.

Again, Microsoft is a multi-billion dollar company and doesn't need or want our pity, but the fact is that they need games in order to pay for the cost of development of the console itself, so they'll do whatever they can to get publishers on board. As I said, their solution isn't great by any means, but as someone with stable internet and no interest in used games, I don't give two shits about the restrictions (and the whole 1984 Kinect argument is, in my mind, still total bullshit, although we'll have to wait until the system can be properly torn down to prove that it's not secretly spying on us). And if it's true that Titanfall is an Xbox exclusive... Well, that will more than make up for the monetary cost of outraged gamers (assuming the current outrage actually results in any decreased sales, which it probably wont).

You know the vast majority of console owners don't use Steam so constantly bringing up Steam to defend these anti consumer policies means NOTHING to people who don't use it.

What's that old saying? Silence is acceptance.

@cusseta: Why invest in an expensive gaming console then? Might as well all go back to PC gaming. Always wanted to try modding games.

Used games aren't killing the industry, but neither will NOT having used games. Eventually, everything will go digital. Do you sell your used games on Steam to buy new ones?

I bought COD black ops II pre-owned the other day from the friendly staff at my local EB Games. I installed it on my Xbox and immediately bought all the DLC and signed up for Xbox Gold again.

1 pre-owned game = DLC sales for Activision and gold account fees for Microsoft. But not on Xbox One.

@huey2k2: Steam sales aren't special for the consumer? That's news to me, but I retract from this conversation. You're either completely overlooking what I say or you put words in my mouth, and I'll have none of it any longer.

@lemonhead: why should they (publishers and developers) get a second cut after the point of first sale? No ONE else gets that deal. If they can't figure out how to make money at $60 with DLC and all that other stuff they deserve to burn for it.

Except your point doesn't hold any water, because Valve has done nothing special for consumers.

They have the exact same restrictive DRM that everyone is fighting against right now. I really don't understand what magical thing you think Valve has done that makes it OK for them to do it, but nobody else.

@huey2k2: You said "Sony won't be the knight in shining armor, they care more about shareholders."

I said: "Being the good guy to consumers is good PR" and used Valve as an example.

I really have no simpler way to explain it.

There is something I genuinely don't understand here. If the used games business is going away, it means that everyone will have to buy their games new. This in turn means that the developers/publishers will get the money, enabling them to make more games. Used games benefit the resellers and screws the developers. Why is anyone against this?

The publishers know that this might make some customers buy fewer games, but they're betting that in the end, the math works out in their favour, so they make more money, which gives them the opportunity to make more games = developers win, we win, gamespot loses.

If instead the sales are dramatically poor, they will have to change their policies and revert their decision, this is the free market in effect, just like the MK2-on-SNES example a few posts above me, and again the consumer came out on top here, because Nintendo dropped their silly policy and gave publishers more freedom to create the games they wanted.

Why are we defending Gamespot here? Why is it not a good thing that the makers of the game get the profits?

Well then I have absolutely no idea what point you are trying to make.

Valve isn't a hero of anything. The only reason people accept it for Steam is because there really is no other alternative for PC gaming. PC gaming is essentially entirely digital now. Console gaming is not, when console gaming finally is 100% digital people will have no choice but to accept whatever DRM is used for it. If people are mad now about the restrictions to buying/selling games I can't wait until the first generation of entirely digital consoles when they won't ever be able to do it again.

This whole generation just feels like MS (and probably Sony) trying to ease the console market into digital and get them used to the idea that they won't be able to buy/sell used games anymore.

And as someone who primarily plays PC games it isn't really of any concern to me.

I know they aren't doing a conference. But they still have their booth right? or did they skip that too? In any case, replace "booth" with "Nintendo Direct" in my former message and it will be the same.

I love sources without sources.

My next console will be a PC.

@cramsy: Yea because gamers have been shoveling money into publishers like EA and clearly we've only gotten top notch quality and respect as consumers and... wait...

LOL. MS finally tires of taking all the heat on this new era of console DRM...and now the hot-ass potato is passed to the people who wanted this stuff in the first place. Your turn fellas. :P

This shit just keeps gettin' better. Who needs reality TV?

As someone who lives in an area of the US that has the potential to be hit by hurricanes yearly, my biggest concern is what about those. Times when I might have to evacuate from my home and want to bring my console to play games, but don't have Internet access? I can not do so for 24 hours? How is this fair or right to me?

.....That's exactly what I said. Nobody cares that Steam has DRM, trading cards (that do nothing), sell DOTA stuff that people specifically ask for, etc. because everybody loves Valve. Somebody else tries to do the same (EA) and everyone loses their minds.

Great job staying on top of this Patrick. What I really want to know also, is if anyone in the games press is Going to take Microsoft to task on this whole NSA Prism deal. I mean the same day that Microsoft tried to alleviate fears that the new Kinect was a total invasion of privacy and how someone could listen in on our spy on you in your house, we also learned that Micrososft was the first company to give up access to the users information to the feds. Someone really needs to grill them about this. Them just denying it while the government is acknowledging it won't do.

Sad, but true. Also, the Wii U looks suddenly much more enticing. Looking forward to some game announcements at E3.

You'r right, but honestly how many more years would you have given Gamefly? The company has clearly been on a downward spiral like Blockbuster a few years back. This will merely expedite their bankruptcy. But I do agree that it is a dang shame if this drives smaller game stores out of business, not that there are many of those left anyhow.

@edgarallanpwn: You realize this is all on the publishers right? This isn't something the XBO decides

Except that Microsoft has weekly sales(Deals of the Week) on stuff in the Markletplace as well as seasonal sales and promotions. And Microsoft has been taking so many ques from Steam already that I'm expecting them to pretty much copy it whole hog come launch or shortly after. And they might also remove the requirement of indi developers forced to have a publisher to release their games on XBL to make it friendlier since that has been a big source of bad industry publicity. And they probably will move away from the 2 arcade games a week policy and the release queue since now that everything will be released on the Marketplace, having restrictions on arcade games make no sense. I think publishing and pricing games on the XBLM will get a big overhaul on the Xbox One.

This is not a good sign at all folks. Time to bail out.

First they came for the socialists,

and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,

and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,

and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for me,

and there was no one left to speak for me.

- Martin Niemöller

@n2nother: Because you've never made a mistake before. Pedant.

Thanks for your work Patrick

Keep bothering them!

Sony's console, so far as we know, does not connect once every 24 hours, so it literally cannot have the same policies. Why does everyone keep saying it will?

That's all anyone really needs.

THIS

Those soccer moms are finna RAGE