Xbox One forces gamers to pay for games borrowed from friends

http://www.osnews.com/story/27056/Xbox_One_forces_gamers_to_pay_for_games_borrowed_from_friends

by mserdarsanli • 13 years ago

103 101 13 years ago

checker• 13 years ago

This post has an overwhelming negative skew. I'm sure there's a less opinionated article which would allow us to discuss the matter at hand. Perhaps this one? (I'm at work, so I can't actually read many gaming-related links)

http://www.gamespot.com/news/microsoft-clarifies-xbox-one-us...

oms1005• 13 years ago

To me, this is a much bigger issue than the possibility of always online. I can sign into my friends Xbox and we can play together, but I couldn't just let him borrow the game. And the fee can be up to full MSRP, meaning that you can't ever really sell your game because it will, by definition, cost someone else MORE than a new copy. I understand that PCs do something similar, but I don't buy PC games with the idea of sharing them with my friends, but I do with my console games. GameStop, gamefly, and others are in a real interesting position as to what they will do with the new Xbox One.

danielweber5• 13 years ago

The PC gaming industry is a market for lemons[1]. There are legit customers out there who won't steal your stuff but far too many of them will just pirate it instead of paying for it. And so everyone has to deal with draconian DRM methods.

Because there are so few modded consoles, though, the console game market works much better. You can buy a game, lend it around, borrow it from Blockbuster or Gamefly, or sell it. If you don't have the disk, you generally can't play. (Yes, there are people who have defeated this. They are an incredible minority that aren't worth paying attention to.)

They are taking away that option. I fully understand why publishers of PC games try to lock stuff down, despite the very best peer-reviewed research being published on torrentfreak saying they shouldn't. [2] But for consoles I must object.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons

[2] This was sarcasm.

sigkill• 13 years ago

If the console market is better then why do they want to implement stronger DRM measures? Feels a bit unfair.

PC: Oh, the piracy is too much we need stronger DRM.

Console: We control the entire chain, we need stronger DRM to maintain that control.

BadCRC• 13 years ago

isn't this how Steam (the platform gamers love) already works?

kevingadd• 13 years ago

Yes. Except I'm not even sure you can activate a Steamworks game's disc multiple times - I think it's one key per disc and you might have to buy a second copy off Steam/at retail and download it yourself.

pmh• 13 years ago

Yes, that's how it works. In exceptional circumstances, you may be able to get Steam support to revoke a key and apply it to your account, e.g. if you purchased a brand new game, the key had already been activated, and the retailer won't take it back.

LanceH• 13 years ago

More or less. One key difference is that Steam is relatively open compared to the console market.

Except for a few major titles, most stuff gets discounted eventually, sometimes even substantially. This leads to decisions of buying it now for a lot or half off later. Console games take forever to get discounted by comparison.

Combine with a locked up marketplace and it's bad aspects of both worlds: Full price downloads with no disk sharing.

danielweber5• 13 years ago

Just about no one expects electronic copies to be sellable or lendable. This concern is about physical media games.

venomsnake3• 13 years ago

I do expect it. It should be codified into law (and there were some european court decisions). The licences should be anonymous and transferable - same as goods.

It basic customer protection and it is good if you have healthy secondary market. There should be some basics customer rights that should not be able to be waivered and the licence seller should not be allowed to offer less.

rodly2• 13 years ago

Well it's how anything digital works now. I can only think of a few exceptions that are truly exceptional (Amazon Book Lending).

You can't have a purely digital content item and not have it bind itself to some kind of purchaser. Why? Because then you'll have one person buying the item and distributing it for every family and friend out there. You might then try to argue that physical items like books and DVDs are subject to this exploitation. Obviously the physicality of the items make them unfit for mass sharing. It takes a lot of time to swap around a single book or DVD. It takes 5 seconds to whip up a dropbox link to my giant email list.

Aside from the above, Steam started off with a "all sales are final and permanently tied to the account purchaser" model. No one expects to be able to buy a game on Steam and then share it with a friend.

ernesth2• 13 years ago

> Well it's how anything digital works now. I can only think of a few exceptions

Well, the exceptions are not that exceptional. Do you buy digital music that you cannot lend? Are you not able to lend a game purchased on gog without paying? All the ebooks I bought I share with my family (and I have the legal right to do so, admittedly, I live in a country where DRMed ebooks are not the only solution).

venomsnake3• 13 years ago

This argument often appears. The simple answer is that Valve can get away with due to the immense goodwill they have gathered (also steam has the benefit of being the first online service)

Valve is a small company (compared to the publishers/sony/MS) that has track record of amazing games and a company that groks gaming and gamers. While Steam is indeed some form of weak DRM the value the platform adds is substantial. Steam workshop and other mod tools are important.

Also while you are on a PC you control what steam can do and not the other way around.

MS lack good will with PC gamers (the communities overlap). They deliberately stagnate the platform, GFWL was terrible ...

jiggy20116• 13 years ago

There's also the price aspect. Unless you are impatient for a particular game you can build up a massive library of games on Steam very cheaply by taking advantage of the sales which are often 50% off or even 75% off.

Even pre-owned/discounted console games cost substantially more than this unless the game is very old or unpopular.

andy_boot• 13 years ago

Steam gained some goodwill by doing things like:

If you buy the HalfLife2 orange box ulimate set and already own HalfLife2. Then you can give your old HL2 copy to a friend for free.

One of the concerns is that people like microsoft wouldn't bother doing the above.

drdaeman2• 13 years ago

This only applies to some of Valve's own games (Half-Life, Portal and Left4Dead, can't remember others).

Spoom• 13 years ago

One of the nice goodwill things I liked about Steam was that when I registered my original copy of Half-Life, they gave me all the extension packs for free. Might have been because they couldn't tell by the CD key whether I had just Half-Life or the pack that included them, but I didn't care.

jerf2• 13 years ago

I see I'm the seventh reply, but I don't think anyone has yet correctly explained why Steam gets away with it. The reason Steam gets away with it is that their prices reflect the fact you can't sell the game.

Watch any simultaneously Steam and console release you like, for a decent game that doesn't immediately crash in value everywhere because it stinks. Watch the prices over the course of the first six months. Watch them both start out at $60, but watch the Steam price come down first, and more often. It's the usual pattern.

Watch Steam have their sales where something goes on sale for $5 or $10 while the consoles are still charging $25 on average.

I played Mass Effect 2 for $5 on the PC, when it was still ~20$ on the consoles. At that price, I don't care that I can't sell it. The abstract ethical arguments still theoretically apply, but in practice it's not worth worrying about. That's already approximately the delta between buying and selling used anyhow.

Based on history, Microsoft isn't going to work this way. For some reason, Steam is still the only digital retailer that has figured out the true supply/demand relationship and tweaked the price curves to maximize their returns, based an a rational model of the economy. Almost everyone else would seem to rather sell nothing at $20 than sell lots at $5.

(Nintendo's even worse than Microsoft at this, actually. EA's Origin seems to have at least partially absorbed this lesson. What's really weird to me is that rationally, the lower prices almost certainly maximize revenue; holding on to higher prices is probably based more in politics than economics.)

nrivadeneira2• 13 years ago

I believe this is the real reason that Steam doesn't get flak for it. If Xbox One games saw the same price fluctuations that Steam games do, I don't think anyone would care about lending games out.

jiggy20116• 13 years ago

Consoles don't have to compete with alternative publishers (MS takes a cut off of every new Xbox game sold regardless of the store, Valve doesn't get a cut of every PC game unless it is sold via Steam).

They also don't have to compete with the scariest publisher of them all, bittorrent; who sells everything for $0.

Console games are probably priced quite well to maximize marginal revenue. I know people who will drop $40 on a console game but who would not be willing to spend $20 on the same game for PC simply because there is a pirate version available.

roc• 13 years ago

This sounds like a necessary evil of the "disc-less" gaming feature.

As long as the used/borrowed copy still plays fine without any fees when the disc is in the tray, I don't see any difference to the console status quo.

Used/borrowed copies wouldn't get the play-without-the-disc feature (for free). But that doesn't even rate as a 'bummer'. That's just a logical, necessary architectural decision.

Otherwise a group of friends would just buy 1 copy of a game, pass it around installing it and then everyone would be able to play without the disc needing to be present. They could even sell the physical disc to Gamestop when they were done and still all be able to play the game.

Obviously, no publisher would sign up for that. So you get account-binding on install. Again, as long as having the disc exempts you from the fee, we're not talking about an experience any different from today. And it would still be more consumer-friendly than purely digital services like Google Play, Steam, iTunes, Origin, etc.

prg3182• 13 years ago

> As long as the used/borrowed copy still plays fine without any fees when the disc is in the tray, I don't see any difference to the console status quo.

In order for someone play a disc that they have purchased on someone else's console, the owner will need to sign into their Xbox LIVE account in order to play the game. Even if the owner leaves the disk with his or her buddy, they will not be able to play it without either a) signing in with the owner's XBL account or b) paying full retail price for the title.

simias• 13 years ago

How would that work? Aren't all the pressed discs identical, how would the console/network know it's a used disk?

That's what CD keys are for, so unless they bring that to consoles the person who owns the disk owns the game.

danielweber5• 13 years ago

This sounds like a necessary evil of the "disc-less" gaming feature.

Without media, I generally agree: no one expects to be able to loan your electronic copy of a game to a friend, or to resell it.

However, the concern is that this will apply for physical media: it will require installation onto your box and be associated with your X-Box Live account. You can take it to a friend's house to play, if you sign into your account, but you can't leave it there unless you let him stay on your account.

If it accepts "disc is in the slot" as its "DRM," that would be totally fine. The concern is that it won't do that. Which sucks. If you are selling physical media for a console, the license needs to move with the media.

nobodysfool• 13 years ago

Well, I believe the new Xbox doesn't actually require the disc be in the console to play it. So when you loan the game to a friend, how would the console know who owns the game? Perhaps each disc would have to have it's own serial number, and if you install it on more than one device with more than one account, it would ask the original account if they were letting "account two" borrow the game. If so, that game would remain installed but be disabled. That seems like the best approach to me.

drdaeman2• 13 years ago

> and then everyone would be able to play without the disc needing to be present.

With online DRM (like, I suppose, Xbox has) it should be only one running instance at a time per bought copy. Which sounds perfectly reasonable. I suspect there are some "offline mode" workarounds, but this is essentially the same as just "pirating" the game.

All this boils down to a question on whenever lending, trading or gifting an "used" game is legal. If law considers so, then removal of an option to give the game away is a straight violation of consumer's rights.

hawleyal• 13 years ago

As long as I can pay 10% of the cost of old games, for removing 90% of it's possible use.

lukifer• 13 years ago

> The Xbox One will still have traditional game discs, but installation to the hard drive has become mandatory.

It sounds like it's not simply a matter of forcing the borrower to play from the disc directly, and the disc is merely a delivery mechanism for a DRM download. (I'm taking the article's word on this; seems like Microsoft is being deliberately vague on the actual mechanics.)

PLenz3• 13 years ago

After years of being a loyal Xboxer I'll (probably) be on Steam Box next.

ryandvm• 13 years ago

As mentioned above, Steam already does this. So...

PLenz3• 13 years ago

But at least they won't charge me a monthly fee for the privilege to.

tarzan3419• 13 years ago

evil!

kmfrk2• 13 years ago

The most interesting about this to me is Microsoft's case-study-awful handling of this; people are still befuddled as to whether this is the case or not, and the PR responses read like Jabberwocky.

It's like a politician deliberately following the mantra of "if you can't convince them, confuse them".

asdf3• 13 years ago

What's more important is that Microsoft can, like Darth Vader, alter the deal.

They haven't been clear, but even if they were clear, the "facts" of how it works will remain uncertain, simply because it's remote controlled DRM and that's what DRM does.

kmfrk2• 13 years ago

And when do you think it's feasible to alter the deal?

This shitstorm surrounded the PS4 event. There are zero reasons this should catch Microsoft by surprise, so I can only assume this confusion is by design, since anything else would imply re-imagining our understanding of incompetence.

sp332• 13 years ago

I kindof assumed they would be leaving the decision of how much to charge up to the individual game developers, who set the price of the games to begin with.

frou_dh• 13 years ago

It strikes me that a shrewd single-player gamer can simply lag behind a couple of years deliberately.

e.g. If at this point in time, you're playing the best Nintendo DS and PS3 games released from 2006-2011, every single one will cost peanuts on eBay or Amazon marketplace.

dmcy22• 13 years ago

True. But for many games, especially FPS, players spend most of their time playing multi-player. By now, the 2006-2010 probably won't have many players online.

bentcorner• 13 years ago

> a shrewd single-player gamer

;)

Still though, for popular multi-player games there are still many active servers/players.

Also, relevant XKCD: http://www.xkcd.com/606/

larrik• 13 years ago

This works for games that sold well. For niche stuff, those games can become hard to find just months after release.

msg• 13 years ago

This is what I did for a long time, just enforced by owning an older PC/laptop. I don't get to play things that tax my computer, but only rarely do I want to.

That makes my gaming experiences very different from someone playing 2560xwhatever with all settings on Ultra. Maybe I don't know what I'm missing. But I tend to emphasize gameplay over shinies.

Along those lines, Monaco is fabulous.

GFischer• 13 years ago

Or GoodOldGames (GoG), or Steam or whatever :) .

drcube• 13 years ago

A further blow in the war on sharing. Of course, this is business as usual for MS.

My mom taught me to share before I was old enough to walk. No government or corporation in the world is going to change my opinion of it.

Chronic24• 13 years ago

You can share all you want. But me, Microsoft, and other companies will charge you for it. No need to change your opinion.

scarmig• 13 years ago

Well, you might send a bunch of government agents to knock down my door to take my house and all my possessions. But no big.

squozzer• 13 years ago

I think it would be nice to give people a choice -- either play off disk to keep the game transferable or install to disk and lose transferability.

But of course the nice option is rarely taken by anyone.

That said, this wrinkle isn't my biggest gripe with the new or even current xbox -- peer hosting is.

jiggy20116• 13 years ago

Not sure how this would work without making the system online dependent to install games.

If I install a game on my console and then lend the disk to my friend and he installs it on his, how will the game know it has already been installed on another console?

If you go with an always online model then you will be able to implement a formal game lending system into the console itself.

stordoff• 13 years ago

It's claimed that you need to go online once per day with the Xbox One[1], so could revoke access during that connection.

[1] http://games.on.net/2013/05/microsoft-reveals-the-xbox-one-m...

drharris4• 13 years ago

Am I the only one that doesn't care about this? We geeks love to wax romantically about how the legacy distribution models are insane, but aren't willing to compromise with any less than free (as in piracy) digital distribution. It seems to me a paradox to claim that A) Distribution should be all digital, and B) We should allow sharing, sharing for everybody, all the things! In the end, people need to get paid, and until somebody comes up with a breakthrough on rights management, we're left with this model. Simple as that.

So, either stop complaining about physical distribution, or else stop complaining about being able to share freely, or get off your couch and figure out a way to get both and sell it to these companies.

chc3• 13 years ago

It's a long jump from "This has all the hassles of traditional physical distribution and then some new hassles you just invented" to "You should just let us pirate this."

When people talk about wanting to revolutionize distribution, they mean take advantage of all the efficiency and convenience technology enables. Some would just like to pirate everything, but not everyone. No one means they want to find ways to tweak traditional distribution models to make them even worse.

drharris4• 13 years ago

Open lending == piracy. Closed lending? Well, I've yet to see a secure and easy way to accomplish this, so I'll reserve judgment. But given how Amazon has treated the eBook distribution model, I would expect all digital goods to go down a similar route (no transfer of rights, lending is more of a trial period than anything, and no two copies running at once). All existing models are confusing for both end customers and rights stakeholders, and there is no way to do it in an open manner.

Let's say MS figures out how to let us share games, but it requires a central licensing authority (MS) to negotiate the transactions. Would you not agree the same geeks arguing the lack of sharing now will be the same ones to pick at that system too? It's a moving target, and doesn't do a bit of good for the stakeholders. I'd expect to not see this sort of system to play out.

rednukleus• 13 years ago

Simple:

* Customer purchase a licence to download and play a game, linked to an account

* Licences can be given or traded with other account holders (subject to a reasonable time-limit)

* Machine has to phone home in order to complete trade.

That would be a completely fair system for all parties involved. But publishers don't want a system that is completely fair for all parties involved.

TREYisRAD• 13 years ago

The Kindle eBook Lending program works like this.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=2...

> Kindle books can be loaned to another reader for a period of 14 days. The borrower does not need to own a Kindle -- Kindle books can also be read using our free Kindle reading applications for PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone, BlackBerry, and Android devices. Not all books are lendable -- it is up to the publisher or rights holder to determine which titles are eligible for lending. The lender will not be able to read the book during the loan period. Books can only be loaned once, and subscription content is not currently available for lending

heurist• 13 years ago

I subscribe to Netflix so I don't have to pirate as many movies. I would love to see someone implement a subscriber model where I can have N games out of a wide selection installed at any given time for $10/month or so, play them as long as I want, and swap them out for other games with no extra charge as long as I am a subscriber. I don't even buy/play video games that often anymore but I would probably subscribe to a service like that and they'd get more money out of me than I usually spend on games. I wouldn't care about owning a copy of the game or limitations on swapping games with friends because they could all play the same games if they were also subscribers. Publishers would get a cut depending on how many of their games are installed, console creators would get a cut since they'd probably be the ones to set up this system, and I'd be happy since I don't have draconian limits on the ability to share things I physically own.

PagingCraig2• 13 years ago

OnLive?

AJ007• 13 years ago

Unless the income or size of Xbox's audience increases, I would not expect this to be a great boon for developers.

dwild• 13 years ago

You need to understands that we don't share a single opinion. Personally I care about physical distribution. I have nearly 400 dvd/bluray and often I share them with my friends/family.

I prefer physical products because you "own" it. You can share it, you can watch it when/where/how you want and you can resale it. The day Microsoft will decide that theirs servers for the Xbox One are too expansive (like all the old Halo multiplayer server), you will lose all your right on theses games.

I only use digital distribution when they are cheap enough (Steam and Netflix).

drharris4• 13 years ago

Agreed, and I still buy blu-rays for this purpose. But, I think the strategy MS is doing is to gradually centralize (like Apple) the distribution model for games on their platform. It would be difficult to go straight to a download-only option (especially in this age of bandwidth caps), but this provides a hybrid that gets people used to the idea of digital rights and learn to accept the ramifications. The disc is just a way to distribute a digital copy without forcing a download. Once people settle in, Microsoft can shift to digital-only in a matter of years without upsetting things. Once digital, we'll see less discounting (no effect from warehousing physical goods), and Microsoft makes more in the long run.

I don't deny the use case you provide (certainly, I'm a fan; I don't care much about digital), but the point is that Microsoft stands to gain a lot from this. The 1% backlash won't make a dent in the potential profit upside.

incision2• 13 years ago

Personally, I'm looking forward to the Netflix of gaming.

I'd pay a relatively hefty monthly subscription fee to have unlimited access to an entire library of games.

smacktoward• 13 years ago

You mean like this? http://www.gamefly.com/

brodney• 13 years ago

That was Gametap and they did not succeed. Maybe someone else will come along and do it better.

everyone2• 13 years ago

This is all a load on nonsense for me.. I'm a PC gamer and I like gog. I'm very happy to buy aything on gog becasue they trust me. They do not waste time with DRM and I do not support DRM, its unnecessary and impractical.

dragontamer• 13 years ago

Gotta upvote for the reference to good ol games. GoG is a great site.

But Consoles have historically been well removed from the DRM wars. It is extremely frightening to me to see DRM enter a mainstream console. If the PS4 follows suite, I'm probably gonna have to boycott both systems and stick with the WiiU.

danielweber5• 13 years ago

Gog is great!

There's a reason they trust you:

1. You are after older games, so you are probably older, and less likely to be a thief. (And even less likely to write screeds about how you aren't really stealing it.)

2. The games have already gone through the peak of their popularity cycle, so they have already captured the bulk of their revenue. Anything now is just a bonus.

3. The price is so low that they don't lose much to piracy even if someone steals it.

I haven't even made it all the way through the last bunch of things I got from GoG, but when I do I'm headed right back there to get some more stuff.

everyone2• 13 years ago

You know gog sell new games now too? For instance 18% (roughly) of the witcher 2s sales were on gog. Also they've become a distributor of new indie games like fez or legend of grimrock

typicalbender2• 13 years ago

Does anyone else feel that requiring that my console be online and connected to the internet is complete crap? Guess its time to break out my SNES

PagingCraig2• 13 years ago

Not really considering how my laptop/computers are connected to the internet 24/7...it's not a large leap to have my console be as well.

typicalbender2• 13 years ago

It may not happen often where you are but there are plent of places where a 24/7 internet connection isn't guaranteed and personally I'd still like to play my XBox when Comcast decided drop the ball for the 5th time this week :)

csense• 13 years ago

I dislike this for the same reason I dislike Steam -- it's a centralized account which has potentially hundreds or thousands of dollars worth of value.

If the service provider drops support, goes out of business, or decides to ban you, you lose an enormous investment.

I've known for at least three years that I would completely drop out of the console market after the PS3/360/Wii generation. Things are just getting too crappy. Maybe I'll go support Ouya instead.

acomjean• 13 years ago

My question is how?

If its write once media, how are they going to implement this. Will you have to type in a DRM KEY and get it verified via a MS server (or hold the box up to the kinect camera to read it? (I should patent that....))

seems odd.

maeon3• 13 years ago

Sometimes I bring my disk from my XBox to a friends house, and play the game on their XBox. With this new "XBox One" console, I will be completely unable to do this. I'll have to tote my xbox around. Of course they will be calling it "buying a game" even though users don't own it in any sense of the word. This progression will eventually lead to "Press 'A' to spend 0.01 cents to leap over this special exclusive objective for an exclusive serotonin release."

I will be going out of my way to make sure I do not buy anything produced by Microsoft ever again, operating systems, consoles, software, etc. We are losing control of our computers. These computers will become a part of us one day, we must preserve our ownership of the metal on up through the software to the right to own and use the software itself. This is important.

I fear the day when we are all just extensions of the mothership, when the system decides you are out of line, the human slaves are simply a "thin client", they just press a button, and your entire life folds up and disappears, and resources are administered to another area. Buyers are losing their RIGHTS here. It's boiling a frog slowly. Soon we won't be able to own anything.

jff• 13 years ago

Or you could presumably log in to your Live account on their XBox, play the game while you're visiting, and then log out? Has the added advantage of continuing to save achievements to your account, giving access to savegames if you want them, etc.

angersock• 13 years ago

Your last paragraph is especially funny. Are you on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn, by any chance?

aquarion2• 13 years ago

If you follow this link, and then follow their source (Which is http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2013/05/xbox-one-analysis/, though they also confirm with the Verge, which lists its source as the Wired article), you'll only need to do this if you want to install it locally. It goes on to say:

cite: http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2013/05/xbox-one-analysis/ But what if a second person simply wanted to put the disc in and play the game without installing – and without paying extra? In other words, what happens to our traditional concept of a “used game”? This is a question for which Microsoft did not yet have an answer, and is surely something that game buyers (as well as renters and lenders) will want to know. (Update: Microsoft called Wired after this story was originally published to say that the company did have a plan for used games, and that further details were forthcoming.)

So taking games around to other people's houses? Or used games? Undefined. Not evil, not announced. They might be doing something bad, but this is shit-stirring, and nothing more.

mullingitover• 13 years ago

I take the lack of news to be bad news. If they had a customer-friendly plan for this, they would've announced that plan proudly. Being opaque about the details strongly implies that those details are not going to make good press for them.

aquarion2• 13 years ago

You are, of course, entitled to your cynicism, but they've announced the existence of the console, the next version of Kinect, and what it looks like, and generated thirty stories on Hacker News alone, and taken over every console gaming site for the last day. Neither they nor Sony announce everything at once.

Xbox One forces gamers to pay for games borrowed from friends

Related Stories