No, because people who go all digital on a non-fucked-up system aren't fucking trading anything.
Disk DRM:
- must have disk in drive
- freely resellable to anyone
- 'just works'
Steam:
- single account check verification once on install
- go offline as long as you fucking want, game still works
- items bound to account, can only resell by reselling account (actively against TOS)
Xbox One BOHICA:
- Disk don't mean shit, go online
- Can't resell to anyone not authorised by MS at prices fixed by MS and that reseller
- Can't play shit if any of the links in the chain break between you and a remote authentication server that may or may not even exist doesn't respond every 24 hours
Your imaginary idiocy:
- All the benefits of digital!
- None of the drawbacks!
- Split the cost of a game amongst 10 people and all play that game simultaneously against each other!
There was literally never any indication that users would be able to transfer licences to other users.
Like... you're literally saying its 'better' because everyone was an equal footing because nobody ever actually owned any of their games.
What?
Nobody is saying retail disks that are just a download redemption code don't exist.
I'm saying retail oxes that are just a digital redemption code don't fucking matter to the end user.
They are well aware that it is a redemption code in a box.
The "physicality" (or more accurately - complete lack thereof) doesn't matter.
They are buying a digital good and they are well aware that they are buying a digital good. They have zero fucking expectations that they can give that code to someone else and it will work.
You really don't seem like someone who actually uses a PC because you're recounting all these claims about the PC market like someone who read a wiki entry or something rather than seeing how things actually went.
The advent of 'digital only' gaming on the PC was fucking Doom. In 1993. People were paying a monthly subscription fee to play Meridian 59 and never having a physical product or anything to resell. In 1996.
That's how long PC gamers have been comfortable with digital purchases for.
I don't know why you keep bringing up "steamworks retail disks" as though anyone had any expectation of resale for them.
There hasn't been resellable PC titles for-fucking-ever.
You keep trying to make this point that people are claiming there is no such thing as a retail presence for PC.
They're not.
They're telling you that reselling a physical copy of a PC game has basically not existed since the advent of the internet.
It is not a customer expectation that they will be able to do that.
Because there is no other DRM on owning a PC.
Some kind of anti-piracy copy protection (DRM before it was even called DRM) has been present in PC gaming since the very start.
And any copy-protection that does not involve a physical dongle inherently cannot be easily resold.
Like... I honestly don't know why this is debatable, other than a seeming desire to push the original X1 plans as a brave attempt to change a market, and not what they actually were: a cynical attempt to control a market.
I mean... I don't get the desire to have a physical disk that is not a physical disk in utility. Whats the point?
Great, you have a physical product to say that you have a physical product, but it doesnt behave in any of the ways a physical product actually would behave.
That was like, the entire point of the backlash.
So how Steamworks retail disks work then, where what you buy is a code in a box and thats what you're buying, the disk has nothing to do with it, and there is price competition between retailers because there isn't a single authority solely selling cd keys?
I mean, I don't know what you mean by "taking family sharing to the next level", but if you think anyone would allow for 10 people to split the cost of a game and then play it simultaneously forever without any additional restrictions beyong a 24 hour check in, I have a bridge to sell you.
Publishers won't even sign up to Play Anywhere where you lose 1 sale on a different platform.
But they'll sign up to losing 9 sales on a platform?
come on...
Over the course of the last page or so, you've basically demonstrated that you either don't know what you're talking about, or that you're deliberately misrepresenting facts for your own convenience. You've also demonstrated the you're either failing to comprehend much of what people are posting, or you're deliberately opting to misconstrue what people are posting because the strawman you're setting up requires it.
Now, those are some pretty strong allegations I just made, right? And so it would probably be best that I substantiate them. So here we go:
Deliberately misconstrued, or simply flat out failed comprehension: In last response you wrote directly to me, you claim that I suggest the proposed hybrid model would have "all the benefits of digital" with "none of the drawbacks". You also claim that I'm purporting that 10 people would all be able to play the same game simultaneously. So then, I challenge you to quote me on any post where I've stated either of these. I already know of multiple of my posts in this thread that explicitly contradict either of these claims, but linking to them in this post would be no fun. You shouldn't have any problems though, right?
Either you don't know what you're talking about, or you're deliberately misrepresenting facts: Firstly you tried to claim that "there was literally never any indication that users would be able to transfer licences to other users", which of course is a requirement to be true as part of your claim that going people choosing to go all-digital on the current systems "aren't fucking trading anything".
soul creator shot you down with a direct link to a page that officially outlines plans for users to be able to transfer content, and whether or not you personally think that's worth an online authentication is irrelevant. There were plans to offer a benefit to digital content that doesn't exist in the current system.
Secondly, the nonsense you state about "there hasn't been resellable PC titles for-fucking-ever". This is quite frankly, horseshit. Doom wasn't the advent of "digital-only" on the PC back in 1993, AT ALL. I had a (somewhat shitty) IBM 486 SX-25 PC at the time Doom released in 1993. You know what I didn't have yet (and wouldn't have at home for another 6 years)?... The fucking internet. I'd buy my PC games from major high-street retailers like Electronics Boutique, HMV or Woolworths, where they sat prominently alongside console games. They would be largely delivered as floppy discs (and often available direct from the developer via mail order as well), and this continued as the games transitioned onto CDs for games like Tomb Raider and Quake 2. Up to this point, none of these games required any form of online authentication or even a CD key be entered. What some of them DID require however, was that the disc be in the drive when you went to load it up, very similar to how discs work on consoles today. Of course this was easily defeated with simple "No CD" cracks as more people found their way online, and this in turn lead to a decline in retail presence for PC games. With the rise of online gaming becoming something more average households had access to, we saw the increased prominence of the "CD key". The CD key was only really effective with the increased online gaming relevance, because locally it didn't discriminate between installations. So I can today download any copy of Quake 3 Arena for PC and use the CD key that I still remember from my original copy bought back in 2000 (bought
used from Computer Exchange btw). The CD key was only effective at preventing me from playing Quake 3 online from multiple computers at the same time.. offline it was infinitely duplicable (which as you can probably imagine got massively abused for LAN environments).
So, in 2004 Steam debuts as a required client for the release of Half-Life 2, and everybody absolutely fucking despises it... but it's fucking Half-Life 2, and it's the only way, so they install it and authenticate anyway. At this point in time it is absolutely NOT clear to anyone buying physical PC discs that a disc that authenticates with Steam (with a similar looking serial number to the CD key they'd be used to seeing) will result in a game that can't be resold or given to someone else. Take a look at these two Amazon listings, for two games released around the same time, and tell me if without prior knowledge, the difference in DRM models is clear.
Half-Life 2 (PC DVD)
Doom 3 (PC DVD)
This is something that over time the PC community has learned to assume simply as a result of it becoming the status quo, and it certainly didn't occur overnight. Here's 2007's
Sega Rally Revo for example, still not requiring Steam, and being freely resellable 3 years later. If anything the situation with Steam was far muddier and more confusing, because there was no clean transition point where one disc that was resellable was clear and easily identified as being so from another that isn't resellable. This confusion still extends into the current day where many games that are Steamworks locked are still regularly listed as used on eBay despite the disc being of little use to anyone else for anything other than installation.
So no... PC gaming hasn't always had restrictions in line with what Steam brought to the platform in regards to physical media, and the argument that "there's no customer expectation" for that is less sound than it was for the initial Xbox One (especially during the phase of it being introduced), because it wasn't applied consistently from the outset.
Now with all that out of the way, I want to address a glaring contradiction in your posts (and to be frank, many that are made on this topic). You suggest that there would be nothing of note that would benefit a user such as myself, and that there would only be drawbacks applied to everyone universally, except the platform owner and publishers. However, you simultaneously argue that it's naive or fanciful to believe that publishers would allow some of the cited benefits to exist. So you're simultaneously arguing that the plans would be anti-consumer and at the same time details of them would be too pro-consumer to possibly be real. In regards to your main point of contention for this though, let me help you out by clarifying (again). Nobody here that was "for" the previous system believes that publishers would sign off on 10 people splitting the cost of a game and all jumping online together (shit, they got at Sony for allowing 5 concurrent digital users at the launch of the PS3). No, the details were (if you can to actually read them properly rather than make them up as you go along) that the account holder and ONE of the 10 family accounts could access the library at any one time. So, at max you'd have 2 people online playing the same game... or in fact
any games from the same library. This is much like how Steam family sharing works, except you wouldn't have to sacrifice being able to play your own games online, in order for one other person to be doing so at the same time.
Seeing as you also apparently understand that as platform holder is still beholden to publisher demands, you should also now be able to see how what would effectively result in an easily duplicable solution (discs providing the console with a permanent offline license) would likely not be a realistic option for a platform holder to take. GoG offers a far less restrictive digital model than Steam does... but as a result most major publishers will refuse to publish new software to it. That's fine for a single storefront, but would outright kill any platform where that storefront represents 100% of its available library.
