It's not odd at all. We as competent buyers (i.e. those who know exactly what we're getting into when we buy the game) weigh up what we can and cannot do with the game when we buy it. If the purchase is likely to an impulse buy and we don't know whether we're going to like the game or not, the inability to resell the game is going to dissuade us from making a €60 purchase for no other reason than the fact that all of that amount will be gone if the game sucks. If we can resell the game, we can at least recoup a part of that amount.

Yah, I'm hopeful that Ubisoft's quasi-surrender, the active use of DRM absence as a marketing tool and the success of The Witcher 2 in spite of the lack of DRM is a sign that DRM is slowly on its way out.

It's going to be a painful death I think, and it's really going to cause a tectonic shift in the PC gaming scene, quite even possibly taking down some of the majors, but things will eventually change. The market as it is stands is unsustainable in the long term.

You spoke that game companies should do more of what they are doing like including game chunks on-line, and that they are currently doing under the "guise of multiplayer functionality" and then talked positively about the Internet allowing for "enforcement" of the developer's rights. There feels like there is some warped sense of entitlement going on that doesn't extend past the gaming market I'm having trouble explaining, so I will go ahead and ask if you a personally involved in the gaming industry by chance.

If not then what you are asking has implications far beyond the gaming market. Its nice to put the market inside a bottle and say a change here would be nice. And maybe they would be, but there are fundamental changes to how trade and commerce are structured that would have to be altered would ripple out into all commerce and trade. Possibly killing entire markets because one industry thought they had rights that extended past the point of sale.

all the abstraction of saying that you aren't really buying anything but a temporary right to play something someone else really owns are slippery efforts to get around the way things usually work. Some of the current technology is great, but attaching strings post sale is not something I have any interest in. Its too messy, and too complex. And a lot of it is seedy behavior devs and publishers have used to self police their perceived rights to things no other industry has.

I personally don't want a service or partial products that have an artificial shelf life. I want to say, " I like that, here is some money for your product." Shake hands and walk away with the goods I have purchased.

Going back into burritos is still going back into the economy - it's still good for the economy and the markets!

Because direct supply and demand is less powerful at regulating the markets than having a healthy used market in place. The middleman is still there, what do you think Steam is or iTunes is or Origin is or Netflix is or Hulu is or Amazon is or ... ? They are middlemen merchants! They are content aggregators which makes finding and buying products easier. Yes the internet allows for more peer-to-peer interactions, but that also helps the used market too. The used market doesn't limit the number of copies sold. It allows growth of secondary markets which is good both for the primary market and for the economy.

Your reasoning behind why the used-market is outdated is what is archaic and outdated. Over the last thirty-forty years we've seen the rise to dominance of your philosophy: the philosophy that companies exist solely to obtain as much money as quickly as possible and damn the longer-term consequences of their actions. It turns out that isn't healthy for those companies or for the consumers who rely on their products. The less power the consumer in regulating the market, the more self-destructive an industry becomes - why do you think the financial industry is the way it is? Trading companies have become less about serving customers in the market than making profit for that company's own shareholders which leads to trading companies to make stock market bets against the very customers they are supposed to be serving! The less power a consumer has in regulating a market the more inefficient and self-destructive that market is.

The internet has the ability to break this cycle by allowing more peer-to-peer selling in both the used and new markets and allowing the monetization of those transactions by third parties - in the case of the used market, potentially the publisher or developer themselves! - providing the service. This is potentially very powerful in allowing customers and the industry more growth opportunities in both markets.

True for the last bit for me too :) The trouble is if the game itself is only ever the factor and not the service around the game, then the customer cannot regulate the service around the game by fiat. :P And the presence of a used market gives a more powerful avenue for the consumer to regulate the market than simply to buy or not to buy at any price point. So removing the used market will make the market take longer, with potentially more disastrous whole-market decisions, to get to the optimum and that optimum will be less advantages for us the consumer than it otherwise would be with the used market in place. And unfortunately the mere ability to buy or not to buy at first-sale, reduced, or on-sale prices - can't really be interpreted as a vote for the existence of the used market. Right now only GMG offers a buy back ability, which is less powerful both for them and their customers than peer-to-peer and unfortunately they are a small player. Now if Steam offered customers the ability to resell Valve games to other Steam users or even a buyback for store credit ... well now ... I think we would see the industry quickly change its tune on how much money could be made off of the used market :)

I understand that, and I'm not saying it couldn't use some clearer defining, or even a set of ground rules about how and what people are getting, about what they are told they are getting and even how long it should last. But that is basically what we're going towards.

Heck, maybe there should be a ground rule that states a game should become DRM free after x years, and that build should be ready at the same time the game comes out so it's guaranteed to exist.

Edit: Ow and no, I do not work in the gaming industry... lol, I just sit at home and play games :)

I think account based DRM can have a place in the market and potentially be a powerful force for good for the consumer even ... but only if it comes with certain rights for the consumer which it is now lacking - for me: If I had the ability to choose to transfer it to a DRM-free copy I own and/or the right-to-resell my DRM license (obviously I can't do both for the same title! :P) then I think account based DRM would not only just be "fine", but a potentially really good option for the digital marketplace to keep around. This harkens back to my earlier comment to you in the other thread about cross-digital licenses possible working as a practical measure.

I'm not sure how one guarantees such a thing especially if there is after market, clouded content involved. It would surely have to be created after all the content is finalized.

I'm fine with the idea but It seems more like an act for the preservation of "art" and not really something to do with trade.

as for where the market is heading hopefully it will settle comfortably where movies are currently at. You can get a movie by service, individual rental, buy digital copies, or buy physical copies. Sometimes I want something for a day, sometimes forever. But I would like it to be rental or purchase, not rental or longterm rental.

Problem is, I don't think we *are* moving towards this. People still talk about buying games, not renting them or licensing them. Companies still advertise games as being for "pre-purchase" or "to buy", because they know full well that the market would collapse if people didn't think they were buying their games. I mean, the fact that Steam games can't be resold isn't widely known and hits a sour note with people who got caught in this trap. Just look at the Steam forums to see what I mean. Most of these people are never seen on the Steam forums again, so it's a safe bet that they just stopped using Steam or possibly even quit PC gaming after that.

The market is effectively being propped up on a lie. As soon as the lie becomes common knowledge, the market will implode. Mark my words.

I could live with this, but again, it's a question of enforcement.

The first case of DRM going belly-up came with Reflexive Games back in 2010. Their promises to release a patch for the DRM in the event that they went under all meant nothing when they spontaneously announced that they would be shutting down their DRM servers and that customers should download and activate their games.

And it's not even like Reflexive went out of business. They just switched to a different business model and abandoned their old customers.

A more prominent example was the way EA handled The Saboteur's DLC recently. It's going to be a much more frequent occurrence in the coming years.

A requirement to remove DRM after two years is useless if the company goes out of the business after a year.

A counter-suggestion, if I may: How about a central repository that archives all games released in DRM-free form and puts said game or a patch into the public domain if the DRM servers are permanently shut down without a corresponding fix?

There is no way in hell companies are going to allow their IP to become public domain.

Heh - the "competent buyer". I'm reminded of that screenshot of those who signed the Modern Warfare 'boycott'. I don't think they fall under the rubric of "those who know exactly what we're getting into when we buy the game", and, sadly, they are the ones most rewarding the publishers with the full-price purchases that encourage the publishers to keep up the same old tricks of strict DRM, heavily-bugged releases, pre-orders, Day-One DLC, etc. If the full-price impulse buyer bases the purchase decision on DRM and resale and not the actual content of the title, then I have a tough time feeling bad for that consumer.

The best way to solve the whole problem? A smarter gaming demographic. If there is a single reason why the DRM issue never reaches a satisfactory resolution, this is it. Bugs aren't new, DRM isn't new (the schemes are).

Hey, I remember that. I know quite a few people who bought Modern Warfare 2 for the PC and none them fit the bill of what I'd call competent in many walks of life. I suffered for that if only because I ended up having to explain to many of them over the phone/over TeamSpeak how MW2 didn't have DedServs, how they couldn't sell their copies when Black Ops came out (it was the first Steam game for many of them, and for some, also their last) and how they couldn't use custom maps.

I did eventually buy MW2 for PS3 at the bargain (used!) price of €25, played the single-player campaign through and sold it again for €20. Haven't played a CoD game since.

And I wouldn't say that I base my decision on DRM and resale, but they certainly influence my choice. DRM for me means that a game has to be fucking good for me to buy it (hence why I've only bought two games full-price that have to be bound to Steam accounts - Last Remnant and Skyrim).

He's lying, used sales work exactly like new sales, the price is dictated by supply and demand, that's why a used copies of some games sell for 35 USD the first month and popular shooters sell for 5 USD under the new copy's retail price.

In addition, by his logic, multiplayer games that cannot get sold "used" should have been extremely cheap ages ago.

DRM is DRM. As soon as an inherently offline game or an inherently offline component of a game refuses to run without a connection to a server, it becomes unacceptable.

Exactly, MMO style log-in? as your Britians say, "Bollocks".