I'm a big fan of GOG and a good customer so please don't be so quick to accuse me when I'm only expressing my honest opinions. But you should never have to rebuy a game unless you lose, destroy or give away your game. Once you buy a game it should always be yours.

Okay so the analogy of the book was probably extreme. For as long as books are still going to printed on paper (how long will this be for though, who knows ?), COPIES of books will continue to be OWNED by those who come into possession of them.

Granted, technology is different. You cannot play a record without a record player, though you can "upgrade" to more modern technology and buy a CD or DVD version of the same album, though it won't sound quite the same. You also cannot play a video tape on a DVD player, you need to buy the DVD first. This is all true - and it all SUCKS actually, because technology-as-the-future sucks as an idea, but that's a matter for philosophical thought.

But this still doesn't alter the questions surrounding the issue of how games are being SOLD nowadays. It was both a shock and not a shock when I saw GOG advertise their first DLC (for Omerta : Gangsters). I expected them to HAVE to do it in order to open up future trade possibilities for themselves but part of me was also shocked because GOG stands so firmly AGAINST this modern trend of ripping customers off left, right and centre (and releasing expansions as DLC is part of this trend). The games industry in general, though, is making decisions as to how to sell games and these decisions absolutely stink and are not even subtle. Purely as a gamer I compare today (2013) with when I bought my first PC (1998) and I can hardly believe the difference. The games industry has been utterly swallowed up by commercialism and is perhaps one of the most corrupt industries on the planet today.

Please ban me if you feel the need to.

Why should you be banned? For stating your opinion? No need of that.


That is true for GOG. That is also true for any game that uses a disk check (including Starforce and Securom) or a code-wheel. That may be true for account based systems, depending on how said account is validated. Changing of ownership though remains available only for games that are on physical medium and don't require an account. So you can't transfer the ownership of your GOG games, no matter how much we'd like it. It is rumoured that steam will allow transfer of ownership, and XBox One would also support it, but people complained about it.
Also, you are still missing the part that we don't rebuy a game because it's no longer working, we rebuy it so we don't have to go through the hassle of setting it up ourselves. Assuming an hourly wage of $7, any game that requires more than an hour to get it working by yourself ends up cheaper just buying it from GOG than doing the legwork yourself. If the game runs out of the box with no problem (Jagged Alliance 2 for example), only reason to get it from GOG is to have a digital copy.


Again, not a recent trend. Here is Test Drive 2 back on the magazine it was reviewed in. It already had 3 DLCs (oh, sorry, expansion packs) on release date. Nickel and Diming isn't recent. For video games it's at least 3 decades old and if we go for the movie industry or the music industry we should be able to go back a couple of centuries at least. So leave your nostalgia glasses at the door, check what was happening in the "golden age", and check what is happening now. It's still the same, only now more people can be informed easier of said practices. Whether that is a good thing or not depends on who you ask.

Also, relevant

Old games were like that before software licensing came into vogue. They were very likely to have nasty copy protection.

Doom and Doom II for:

-PlayStation
-PC (Collector's Edition)
-DOS (Doom II CD-Rom which has the first game on the disc, albeit the standard 3 episode version)
-Xbox (Came with the limited edition of Doom 3 and Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil)

@JMich

(Hint : if you're going to block someone then out of politeness please tell them in advance so that they don't waste half an hour writing out a response which will not process. I would do the same for you and in fact would never have blocked you in the first place, regardless of whether I agreed with you or not.)

The book analogy is one thing. Of course most books are still made out of paper and (imo) long may that continue. As long as books continue to be printed on paper (and how long will this be for ?) then if you own a copy of a book you will never have any trouble in reading it, as long as you can still read .

In the case of music you not only need the appropriate "hardware" (e.g. a record player) but also the appropriate "software" (e.g. the record). And then times move on and it becomes the CD player / CD and the DVD player / DVD etc. etc. So technology is definitely altering reality here, though the same music remains available for all to listen to. But yes, if you own an old 33r rpm of the Beatles you will have to buy a turntable to play it on.

The same is true when it comes to computer games (or most programs) : you need the appropriate hardware to run the appropriate software. This is one of the reasons why, sadly, imo, computer games will never be able to become works of art : they will never be preservable for long enough because technology, despite its cleverness, isn't really thinking much about the past when it thinks about the future. The computer games industry, as it stands, will always be something transient and temporary because it is dependent on technology. It's a throwaway industry, at least at the moment.

SELLING games, however, has nothing to do with technology or philosophy and it's easy to see what is unfair about the way the games industry is operating nowadays. The tricks which the games industry keeps pulling out of its hat in order to keep itself booming are pretty contemptibly transparent to be honest. People have been outraged by DRM for a long time now and it's not going to die down purely because the arguments in its favour are so obviously concocted and contrived. The arguments in favour of DRM are so wafer-thin and transparent that it borders on an insult to the intelligence even of a cockroach.

And selling a game multiple times, or planning the sale of game so that it will be sold in multiple instalments is just utterly transparent and contemptible, as well as dishonest. It's just incredible that anybody outside the games industry, or in fact anyone WITHIN the games industry, can actually "believe" in this.

Edit : I submitted this post AFTER my previous post (which is now published) had apparently not processed, so I was trying to remember what I'd said and that's why most of this post is a repetition of what is in my previous post.

I cannot recall how many times I've purchased the base game of EverQuest for various reasons but it must be at least half a dozen times or more. For starters, I've owned four accounts in the past for multi-boxing so there's four copies right there. Additionally there were times when buying an expansion with the base game and all previous expansions was a good deal even though I already owned everything but the latest expansion. In particular I would do this to have one set of disks for a complete install handy. So there was more purchases of the original game too. I also have in my closet a golden lunchbox from a special edition I bought because the lunchbox was cool and it came with a cloth map, etc. It got to a point where I tossed most of the boxes/discs because once the accounts are set up, you only need one set with the most current complete installation. That said, I have my lunchbox in the closet, one full DVD set on my shelf and I think a couple more boxes under my bed.

I should have waited I guess. It is free to play now, well not really of course but that's another topic for another thread. ;-)

Metal Gear Solid 2 and 3. Bought each 3 times.
Original release, Substance/Subsistence version, and then HD.

Will possibly buy them a fourth time with the Legacy Collection thing.

I think one of the most common reasons for repurchases over the years tends to be media obsolescence. First we had games on 5 1/4 floppies, the 3.5 discs, then CDs, then DVDs, the digital media. And this sort of thing is not limited to the games industry. For example, 78 RPM records, 45 RPM records, 33 1/3 RPM records, 8-track tapes, reel to reel tapes, cassette tapes, CDs, digital distribution, digital distribution again with higher bit rates of the same stuff (128 improved to 256 being common now, etc.). Then there is is video with VCR tapes, DVDs and Blu-ray.

In each of the above examples, people have and continue to repurchase favorites on newer media be it for games, movies or music. It is not just the evil games industry and actually there is nothing evil about newer and better media becoming available to us. And no, that shouldn't be free because we bought something on the older media ages ago. It costs them something to produce the new stuff, market it, sell it, etc. Of course you need to buy it again if you want the latest for whatever reasons you might have.
It is? I bought it one time with everything but some sprites I think and I got those for dirt by waiting on a Steam sale, just like I waited for the whole thing to be on sale, just like I always do. Nobody makes consumers do anything, the do not trick consumers into doing anything, people do whatever they damned well please, including blow their money if they feel like it. I like to save money, I need to in fact. So I wait and always buy GoTY Complete this and that, etc. and I always get it on sale - cheap. I have no problem with the games industry really. I buy what I want at the prices I want and they can keep the rest I don't like. That works just fine. I don't see the problem really.

This basic idea I agree with. I've always felt that from the very start, software licensing was designed purely to benefit the seller greatly and the consumer not at all. Can you imagine buy a license to drive a car that has limits imposed by a EULA which includes you not being able to lend or sell your car when you want to? Why should software as a consumer product be any different really?

I for one would like very much to be able to purchase more than a plastic disk or access to some bits on a server somewhere and limited rights to use it according to some EULA designed to maximize profit for the publisher, etc. and minimize value for me.

I would like for example to be able to decide I feel like giving away some album I don't like all that much to someone who I think would like it on say, iTunes and the same with a movie purchased there. Currently, that is not possible. I can't even pass down my iTunes and Amazon music legally to relatives when I die! I only purchased rights to use it on a limited basis myself, in effect a long term rental, not ownership.

In the same way, I would like when I am finished with a game and don't expect I'll want to play it again say, on Steam, to be able to either sell it, trade it or simply give it away as desired. I'm only wanting what I could do in the past before digital media with physical products here.

Digital media has often meant severe rights restrictions unseen before in consumer sales that render customer purchases to long term rentals they cannot share, sell, trade or even leave to someone in their will. I would love to see governments on behalf of consumers world wide bring an end to this.

In the meantime though, like everyone else for the most part I put up with it because the alternative is to not have games, music and movies at all in a lot of cases. The very fact that there is so often no alternative is what makes me feel that governments should fulfill their function to serve the people and take action to change this.

None of the above means I condone theft. I just want fairness.

I VERY much agree with what you just said about giving away games, music etc. It should be so much easier to do this. It's rampant commercialism and legalism / litigiousness and a general egoism which is spoiling the world at the moment. It is really SO EASY to be fair but the mantra at the moment seems to be "what's in it for me ?" What is angering a lot of people at the moment is that rising to the top (of society or in terms of how much money you've got) seems to be synonymous with acting like a spoilt brat and taking everything for yourself (politicians set the standard here and have set a LOW standard). The games industry is only ONE example of this but it offends me particularly because gamers, although they are on average growing a bit older, are still on average young. Young doesn't mean unintelligent (far from it) but it very often means NAIVE. I have close relatives who are very young and I fear for them.

Fallout: New Vegas -- 3x.

PS3 Collector's Edition: It was the required platform at the time, but the Making Of disc is Blu-ray.
Digitally bought everything on Steam/PC.
Bought the physical PC Ultimate Edition.

Well, as a 54 year old gamer who was also around from the start of all of this I can understand how you feel. I simply reject outright stuff like purchasing say, Saints Row 3 full price and then DLC as it releases one by one, two by two or whatever at full price. I will not be raped like that. I will however gladly pick up the whole thing complete for 12 bucks later on. That works for me.

I do hear what you're saying though. It is nothing less than conniving and deliberately milking customers for as much as they can get away with and this is now typical across the games industry with everything from piecemeal releases ( sprites in paradox games is a favorite example of mine - really? fucking sprites? ) to so-called free to play games that suck until you pay and which are deliberately designed to actually get more money from customers in total which they do. This is why it has become so popular. They generate more revenue total doing this than they were with subscriptions. I never see people discuss that much. lol

By the way, when it comes to free to play I will give Turbine Entertainment some credit for being honest and open about its impact for them with LoTRO. I forget if it took just one or maybe two quarters but going free to play resulted in tripling of revenue. From this we can easily conclude somebody was paying something to play and in fact either some number of people were paying more to play or more people were paying to play in total or most likely a combination of the two. No wonder free to play is popular today.

Funny thing isn't it? The game is free to play but they somehow make three times the money. How do you like that? Well, Warner Brothers liked it a real lot and bought Turbine. lol

The part I really get a kick out of is the many times I have read posts written in dismay and disgust about how some free to play game turned out to not really be free. Apparently, they actually bought into the idea that the same experience people used to pay monthly for was now magically free for all, never considering that the company making the game might need to pay its bills somehow and perhaps even turn a profit.

Paradox is the perfect example when it comes to PC games. I don't know much about the individuals themselves but while part of me admires them for their ultra-ambitious grand strategy games (though not so much for their utterly abysmal manuals) the other part of me despises them for the way they released what is basically the same game over and over and over again. Not only that but they release a game and then add an expansion, which they release as a separate purchase, then they release the original game + the expansion and call it something fancy ; then they bring another expansion out and sell it as DLC and perhaps even release it on DVD, followed by another "complete" version which isn't really complete, followed by another expansion and a new "complete" version available either digitally or on DVD ...

For the iPad/iPhone, of course, we have these wonderful "free" game apps. Well they are free to begin with at any rate. By the time you've finished playing them they've probably cost you the price of three full price PC games. So the PC certainly doesn't have a monopoly on squeezing cash out of its customers and in some ways Apple makes the PC look like an innocent angel, but the games industry as a totality is a bit of cash cow, shall we say ?

P.S.I bow to your seniority. It makes a refreshing change for me to speak to a gamer who is actually OLDER than me, assuming you're not pulling my leg that is :)

Edit : And I appreciate your point about free-to-play games and about how this can work (in the long run) economically. The games industry mainly seems to be about making a quick buck and ripping customers off. Actually making games enjoyable for people and NOT trying to rip them off can pay dividends in the end because that way you earn a dedicated, trusting fanbase of people who are enjoying themselves and who in the end may even WANT to pay you even though you have not asked them to.