Microsoft reverses controversial game licensing policies

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/06/rumor-microsoft-set-to-reverse-controversial-game-licensing-policies/

by coloneltcb • 13 years ago

121 95 13 years ago

bluehex• 13 years ago

I had a feeling this would happen. It was either that or just let the competition walk away with a huge percentage of their customers without a fight. Seems like the obvious decision.

cobrausn• 13 years ago

I was actually not expecting a complete reversal, just a loosening of restrictions (something like 2 week check-ins, like Steam does).

Both of the new machines (Xbox One, PS4) still allow third party publisher DRM (such as EA's 'Project Five Dollar') though, and if the console market moves towards digital distribution the way the PC market has, the used games point might be moot.

chrisrhoden2• 13 years ago

It's not clear to me what the change will be, or how it will be an actual win for consumers. The region locking being dropped would definitely be a win for the minority of potential customers outside of the privileged regions, but the fact is that the DRM scheme that they proposed, while never explained very well, was probably better than leaving how one-time-use-codes should work to manufacturers (EA Online Passes spring to mind)

uptown• 13 years ago

How is it not clear? You can play games without checking-in every 24 hours, and if you want to share or sell a game, you transfer the physical media you purchased. Downloaded games cannot be shared.

chrisrhoden2• 13 years ago

The official comment from microsoft had not been made when I made my comment. Overall, this is a clear step backwards so that Sony has to change their bullet-points, which were disingenuous to begin with.

This makes me sad.

interpol_p3• 13 years ago

Yes but checking-in every 24 hours is not something you actually "do". It's something that happens transparently in the background. The vase majority of consumers wouldn't notice the automated check-in that was present in their previous design.

tjdetwiler• 13 years ago

I always thought they should have applied all the new DRM features to digital downloads only. In that context, sharing and selling does look consumer friendly and if they make it convenient consumers will move away from physical media.

missing_cipher• 13 years ago

Plus with the "Family group" feature, it would have made even more sense.

Cyril-Boh• 13 years ago

I wish they coined another term for this rather then digital downloads. How can a download not be digital?

dragonwriter• 13 years ago

Provided you had an analog communication channel and storage medium you could have analog downloads -- it would be similar to recording per-digital TV on a VCR. But, yeah, "digital download" is mostly pointless noise.

nthitz• 13 years ago

Here's a statement from MS http://news.xbox.com/2013/06/update (may need a refresh or two to load) looks like they are removing the feature of being able to play a game without the disc in the tray, which pretty much was the root of all these drm issues IMO

wmf2• 13 years ago

There's a tradeoff between discless play and used games; allowing both leads to massive piracy (in somebody's mind). It looks like MS has gone from one extreme to the other.

ameen2• 13 years ago

Used games IMHO are a menace. How many software companies give away transferable licenses? (apart from Open-source licenses)

It isn't fair to the publisher/developer. I'd rather have seen a price change to facilitate more ownership rather than used games sales. EA's implementation sounded a bit practical to solve the used games market.

baddox2• 13 years ago

It would be relatively trivial from a technical perspective to allow virtual game licenses to be gifted from one XBOX ID to another, or even transferred to a serial key which could then be sold/traded by individuals or third party retailers like GameStop.

resu• 13 years ago

Up next, Kinect...

nivla5• 13 years ago

Actually I am excited about the new Kinect for personal hacks. According to MS, you will be able to turn off the Kinect, if not, its nothing some tape can't fix.

camus• 13 years ago

I want an xbox1 cheaper therefore without a a toy i will never use. If you want to "hack" a kinect,then buy one separatly. Or at least MS should give the choice to buy a console without one ,at a lesser price.

MichaelGG4• 13 years ago

You'd probably need more than tape to render the microphone theoretically useless.

DomBlack2• 13 years ago

I'm actually annoyed with these changes; they have reverted back to the Xbox 360 way of doings things;

* Disk must be in the drive to play

* Share games by lending the disk.

The previous scheme, while it would not be befinical to some due to the 24 hour requirement, did allow for some exciting new ideas (which we've got used to with Steam);

* Access my games anywhere without needing a disk

* Share the game with my family who live away from me

wmf2• 13 years ago

Wasn't the family sharing stuff only on the same console?

DomBlack2• 13 years ago

No it was multiple consoles from my understanding of it, you just had to link the Xbox Live accounts into one "family"

MichaelGG4• 13 years ago

Don't buy discs! MS said that digital purchases will have same priority as retail discs. Why do you want a disc anyways, except for resale or slow connection? Everything I get for the 360 is via download, and I don't have to worry about discs. Still have to worry about license transfers, which is gonna be the same under any system where the publisher controls the terms.

jviddy2• 13 years ago

My biggest issue with digital downloads is the cost.

My experience with Xbox live is that digital releases are launched at a price and stay there, apart from limited time promotions, for a long.

I can go on to Amazon or into HMV and get major releases from a couple of months ago for half the RRP, normally significantly cheaper than download. Plus i can give the disc to one of my friends when i'm done.

SurfScore2• 13 years ago

I don't get the negative response to this. They made a mistake (admittedly being too greedy), and now they're correcting it. People didn't like the DRM, SO THEY TOOK IT OUT! Get over holding a grudge; the Xbox has a lot of very good exclusives and has always been a solid console. It just goes to show you that you can never make the internet happy.

sharkweek• 13 years ago

I'm no expert here and I especially don't really have a preference between the two consoles as I haven't gamed much the past few years -- but it seems a lot of fanboy personalities love feverishly being "right"

This is just an opportunity to say "HA, we won! They changed their course of action because of US!!! SUCK IT MICROSOFT"

We all know PC gamers are the master race though anyways, so any subsequent arguing is moot /s

baddox2• 13 years ago

I don't quite understand why you attribute the mistake to "being too greedy," especially since this decision is a response to public outrage and thus will likely make Microsoft more money/profit. One could just as easily attribute Microsoft's desire to satisfy angry customers to "greed."

SurfScore2• 13 years ago

I was referring to the original DRM decision as being too greedy when they made it (before the backlash). Companies institute DRM to decrease piracy, which increases their bottom line.

The effectiveness of DRM is a totally different subject, but in this situation they chose their bottom line (DRM) over the desires of their customers, taking a gamble that the losses in sales from pissed off people would be less than the gains from decreased piracy.

Negitivefrags• 13 years ago

It's simple, not everyone has the same opinion.

People like myself preferred the system they designed because you didn't need to use the disk and could play a game you owned on any system that you logged in to, just like steam.

msabalau• 13 years ago

Some people viewed a series of actions and statements from Microsoft as showing contempt. Simply changing a business model to one more acceptable to consumers does not remove people's emotional reactions and suspicions about motives. Time (assuming no other mis-steps in the immediate future) can cure a lot of this, but, as you may have noticed, an awful lot of people's personal identity gets caught up in their consumer electronics purchases.

Microsoft messed up so badly that many people themselves as being on the xBox side of the "holy wars" that swirl around consoles "converted" to Sony.

A brand is a powerful tool. It might not be logical, but people do build emotional connections with brands. As with any power tool, you want to be careful and avoid cutting off your arm.

contextfree3• 13 years ago

They didn't really "take out the DRM", they just replaced one form of DRM (not being able to play if your internet has been disconnected for 24 hours) with another (not being able to play without the disc in the drive). It's pick your poison, and different people have different preferences.

ameen2• 13 years ago

If this is true, there isn't going to be the announced "Family Share plan" or the "Disc-less" operation. Also, the fact that a few consoles might not be connected to the Internet means, MS can't really do cloud processing as it claimed (since it would lead to variable experiences of the same game).

I see this as a step-backward than a step ahead. Sure there will always be a vocal minority, but rather than provide them an alternative, they've just gimped an online console.

jiggy20113• 13 years ago

if cloud processing is an essential feature of the game then it would make sense to require an internet connection to run that game. Same as how nobody complains you can't play WOW offline.

What I think people objected to was a requirement across the entire console.

eric5544• 13 years ago

The requirement was only that the console had to be connected to the internet once every 24 hours so I don't think that impacts their cloud efforts one way or another.

Not being able to play games without the disc in the tray is a major downside of the new policy though. Of course at least for me that means I will buy all Xbox One games digital going forward.

princess3000• 13 years ago

I'm not super technical but I've always been skeptical of "cloud processing," especially after the Sim City debacle. Are there any scenarios where actually processing information on a server instead of on the user's home Xbox make sense, aside from things like WoW and Diablo III where you need to do the calculations on the server to make the multiplayer aspect fair?

gamble• 13 years ago

I can't see many developers putting the time to offload calculations when they'd have to make the game work seamlessly with varying levels of latency or the servers becoming unavailable. Just look at how difficult it has been for games to utilize a handful of CPU cores. Microsoft's claims about the cloud remind me of ten years ago, when the .net label was being applied to everything they made and all software was somehow going to be delivered as web services. Plus I doubt MS is offering cloud server time to developers for free. Every service they provide to devs comes at a cost.

diminoten3• 13 years ago

It makes sense for multiplayer games to not be hosted on arbitrary client boxes, but on some kind of neutral, low-latency "cloud" device (I know you said other than this, but I thought this was the biggest selling point for it in the first place).

It also makes sense for "complex" calculations. It's how stuff like Google search and Google maps works - you send the query, big machines chomp on the query and spit out a result, and your netbook doesn't have to go into overdrive trying to figure anything out. Basically anything that can take 100ms or so to complete could be moved off of the appliance and onto Microsoft servers. Why? Well, why not? Make some more room for rendering, I guess.

shock-value• 13 years ago

It'd be a slight step ahead for anyone with a persistant, reliable connection, but a drop-off-a-cliff for anyone else (a large part of the world). And that isn't even counting the implications for used games. I don't think they were ever going to be serious about that share plan either; there'd be too many abuses.

Edit: and also, as mentioned, reliable cloud processing was never in the cards since they were only ever going to require check-in once per 24 hour period.

jiggy20113• 13 years ago

This isn't surprising at all, Microsoft is just giving gamers what they are asking for to head off the bad PR. In the meantime they will start pushing game sales for the xbox in the direction of digital downloads.

smackfu• 13 years ago

Now you can see why it is so tempting for companies to reach out to their competitors and say "so... we want to make this change, you want to make the same change and we both win?"

nivla5• 13 years ago

During this whole fiasco, I was trying to put myself into their shoes on what they were trying to achieve. On the outside, it looks like a great idea. The ability to share games with family. No longer you need to carry discs to your friends house. You can lend them games to strangers on the Internet without worry about losing it. You can have an organized catalog on the cloud, and never have to get up to pop the disc in. Sell the disc game to X over the internet and cut out the middle man (Gamestop). etc...

However the whole, connect 24 hours to verify the ownership of the game is a big turn off. I understand that, theoretically you could sell your game and then keep playing it on a switched off console. So if it were you, how would you go by achieving all the pros and none of the cons without enforcing DRM? Not supporting DRM but genuinely curious.

superuser2• 13 years ago

Deactivate on the first console before allowing sale?

nivla5• 13 years ago

But how does that work when you are trading in the physical disc at Gamestop and you still have the game stored on your console that is disconnected from the internet? Or if you were to sell it virtully, pop in the physical disc onto your first or second console that has been disconnected from the internet before the sale.

bskap3• 13 years ago

The only way to do that would be to limit used game sales to specific retailers that have the ability to check if a disc has been deactivated before accepting it. You know, that thing that people got really annoyed at because they want to just hand the disc to another person and be done with it.

thisisdallas• 13 years ago

I believe it would be pretty simple. Keep the family sharing plan and the 24 hour check but only for digital purchases. If you have a disk based game than you wouldn't be able to share it but you also wouldn't be required to have the console connected every 24 hours.

nivla5• 13 years ago

Guess this is their only choice right now. Have a divide between digital and physical copies. People who buy digitally gets better rewards (subjective) than people who buy the physical disk.

jstevens85• 13 years ago

I'm guessing that the publishers were only willing to allow features such as family sharing etc in exchange for limiting used disc sales.

magic_haze3• 13 years ago

Very simple. Keep the 24 hour restrictions as-is, but allow transition to an offline mode after notifying the mothership. This disallows all the family sharing features. Games installed using a physical disk would require the disk to be present, downloaded games are unaffected (since you can't sell them without connecting to xbox live.) This takes care of the submarine scenario. When you're back online, check for the disk again before allowing disk-less play. Make sure the offline transition can be done through smartglass, and you handle the hurricane/somebody-cut-the-fiber scenario as well.

Any holes in this approach?

thwest• 13 years ago

Main problem being explaining it concisely so all the journalists at E3 understand.

nivla5• 13 years ago

+1 I guess this is a very good solution. It merges the best of two worlds. However, with the mixing of digital and physical world, I wonder how many fraudsters will sell their games digitally and then try to sell the disk on ebay? Or vice versa.

contextfree3• 13 years ago

Games were meant to be installable on multiple consoles, so if they wanted reselling or giving away a game to completely disassociate the license from the seller's/giver's account, every console with that game would need to be kept online to verify this. So if there were an offline mode that disabled license-transfer features, it would have to apply as long as even one console were in this mode. This means that it would be possible for someone to put themselves into a state where they'd be permanently prevented from reselling or giving games because they don't have physical access to some console that's been put in offline mode.

There are of course further workarounds/mitigations for this problem, such as putting a (100 days?) time limit on offline mode, but they make the system even more complicated.

mikelat• 13 years ago

My guess is that it started with the simple idea of "we want to move to digital so we can phase out retail and get more out of each sale like steam does" (pressure from shareholders and increases in development costs).

Then they probably went through every worst case scenario possible, like a group of friends sharing a single licence of skyrim and just leaving their consoles offline, and made rules around them.

It probably didn't really click with them and they thought this was a great idea up until the point they got absolutely grilled at E3.

The thing is with steam, they don't really care about people sharing steam accounts and being offline, it's only a violation of the TOS but they have no checks for it since it's not a rampant problem. I think if they sold games for a decent price and trusted their customers they wouldn't need any invasive DRM schemes.

interpol_p3• 13 years ago

Then they probably went through every worst case scenario possible

It's such a bad idea to develop a product like this. Developers who focus on anti-piracy measures miss the point: focusing on a frictionless way for consumers to acquire your product (and keep it up-to-date), while ignoring all those who pirate it will lead to more money in the long run.

Most anti-piracy measures introduce friction for genuine consumers who want to give you money. It's a poor trade-off.

zainny• 13 years ago

I think you're bang on. It really is just as simple as them wanting to do everything digitally ala Steam and then they walked through every possible scenario in which a person can cheat/game the system and built their checks, restrictions, requirements, etc. around those.

And in doing that, they created something truly quite terrible and very difficult to explain to the average person. I followed a lot of the Xbone coverage and have to admit I'm still confused as to how exactly their systems/checks, etc. would work. Based on what I did understand though, it sounded horrible.

interpol_p3• 13 years ago

I understand that, theoretically you could sell your game and then keep playing it on a switched off console.

They don't seem to understand that the inconvenience of doing this will prevent the vast majority of people from doing it. If the option to disconnect from WiFi is behind even one layer of menus, most people will find it too annoying to switch on/off in order cheat the system.

If they simply ignored all those people who want to cheat them — let it happen — and make it super easy for people to play and share within their system, I think they would find that they earn more money.

(Though personally I am not bothered by a 24 hour check-in. Since all my devices are always connected, I doubt I would notice this in practice.)

hobs• 13 years ago

The lend game thing was limited to once per game, ever to friends of 30 days or more.

Its like saying "you know that potential infinite thing, we are now definitely saying you can only have one." It reminds me of the difference between free refills and no free refills, the actual amount of extra drinks you get probably is not high, but some soda heads will be pissed if they dont get free refills.

drivebyacct2• 13 years ago

On the downside, there will be no digital "family" sharing as was previously announced, and disc-based games will require the disc to be in the tray to be played.

Nooooooooooooooooo. Please still allow me to opt in for digital downloads so I can finally stick the console somewhere where I don't have to see it, hear it or suffer it's heat wrath.

lizardking• 13 years ago

I want this as well, but I'm not exactly sure how that will jive with the mandatory kinect. My 360, along with all of my other components are in the basement.

bskap3• 13 years ago

I believe they are planning to have day-1 digital downloads. This backtrack does mean that, at least for day 1, the family sharing and used-digital-game features won't be available but you can still get all the games without discs.

jleehey• 13 years ago

I honestly don't see why they can't do it both ways. For people who buy game discs, let them share and play offline, but for those who choose to buy the DRM-enabled digital download version of the game, let them install it to the hard drive and play without a disc across consoles. It's all down to user preference anyway, why does it have to be one way or the other?

vinkelhake• 13 years ago

For the people here that didn't really read the statement:

"you can also download games from Xbox Live on day of release"

If you have a decent Internet connection and don't want to use discs, you have that choice.

sivam• 13 years ago

They should rename the Xbox One to the Xbox 180, it would be very apt.

On a more serious note, I don't like this rollback. It only goes to show how the witchhunt and echo chamber on Reddit worked. Even before the reveal, Microsoft was falsely accused of trying to game Reddit and everyone flew off the handle over someone pretty much lying to be a troll. Say the word "DRM" and you get bucketloads of Reddit karma and posts pointing out the facts(forget about posts taking the opposing view or opinion) were downvoted into oblivion by the angry mob.

And then there was the bad timing on the NSA leaks, which didn't help at all. Everyone has smartphones, laptops and tablets with cameras and mics which could be watching and listening and Apple/Google were part of the leak, but it was Microsoft that was singled out for proposing a device that could turn on itself, and had numerous safeguards to configure privacy if you wanted to.

All this doesn't excuse the fact that Microsoft utterly and totally failed in communicating their message in a proper manner in E3 and handed Sony an easy victory on a silver platter.

I guess it was easy to roll this back because it was not Microsoft but publishers and game developers that were going to reap the benefits of diskless gaming because Gamestop etc. skim off the value of older games and leave publishers with not much value. Once the public failed to see the advantages and blamed Microsoft for a power grab that was not going to really benefit them all that much, it was game over.

drivingmenuts• 13 years ago

A friend posited the theory that all of this was a calculated move on Microsoft's part.

First, they throw up the idea of some draconian DRM, which they then later retract. The first move gets them tons of publicity and tongue-wagging, the second move starts to make that positive publicity. They're banking on gamers being so addicted, they won't really care that they've been played for idiot chumps.

If the market for the new XBox was 12-year old children, they wouldn't even have bothered. But, since they're really marketing to adults 20-35 or so, they have to look like good guys to the people they're talking out of their money.

This was calculated. Reddit and everyone else got played. Hard and dry.

clavalle• 13 years ago

That would be a valid theory if they didn't have a very similar competing product released at about the same time. A competitor that captured the lion's share of positive publicity by merely maintaining the status quo.

As it stands, I will be surprised if XBox One captures 25% of the latest gen console market when it is all said and done.

jonny_eh• 13 years ago

Microsoft is not that clever, and regardless, I don't see how this 180 will turn out in their favour. They have clearly lost momentum to this.

Radix_• 13 years ago

I like this theory a bit but I don't think the part about getting positive publicity works out. They don't really look good here and, though I haven't read Reddit's response yet, I don't think they're going to look good to hardly anyone. At least not the 20-35 year olds who were aware of the snafu.

I think I cleaner interpretation is that they were aware that the push might fail but figured going back on the setup as they've done wouldn't set them back too far. And the move, even if it failed, would set them up for basically the same change in the future of the consoles life. Remember they changed the Xbox dashboard a lot. They can still add the planned sharing features to download only games. At first only to developer opt-in games then just the MS published games will have the additional features. After that other publishers will need to have their games use the extra features for licensed download games.

So everyone saying they ought to have done both may be right but maybe it wasn't ideal and they reached a bit too far. So they've fallen back and are retooling. I just wish they'd let me take off adverts on the damned main dashboard! I never buy anything and they know it.

warfangle• 13 years ago

Gonna have to invoke Hanlon's razor here.

ricardobeat• 13 years ago

Re. used game sales, it surprises me to see everyone repeating the idea that game stores "skim" value from publishers. The license has been paid for, the original owner will lose his ability to play the game; there is no value being created and no reason at all for the publisher to participate in that transaction. Do you think car makers should be entitled to a fee every time you sell your used car?

MichaelGG4• 13 years ago

Microsoft was releasing a new console, with unimpressive hardware, focused on TV and family over games, at a higher price point.

Announcing a crazy DRM plan was a fantastic PR move. If people liked it, they can just go ahead with it. If they didn't, they end up burning lots of press time talking about something on their terms, instead of focusing on what Sony wants you to think about the actual hardware

No PS4 or XB1 units have been shipped. Except now, Sony has less time to make the real arguments against the XB, and already people can just accuse others of "complaining about everything on the Internet". MS wins points by "making a major change in response to consumers". More than if they had taken this position from the beginning.

A bit risky, but it'll pay off fantastically for MS.

theseanstewart• 13 years ago

Sony has a price advantage still, which is why the 360 "won" the last generation's console war.

knodi2• 13 years ago

This is a shame, I was really looking forwards to disc-less play and family sharing.

How cool would it have been if all my friends made a family group and with that we can all play each others games. But no people love gamestop.

LaurelCrowned• 13 years ago

Pretty sure they would be limiting that to one IP address. There would be restrictions.

bskap3• 13 years ago

There was no IP limitation, as I understand it. Everyone on your console could always play all of your games. And you could designate 10 people that had access to your library from anywhere.

_pmf_• 13 years ago

Amazing what a bunch of angry basement dwellers on the internet can achieve.

jviddy2• 13 years ago

Another sad day where the indignant vocal minority have spoiled it all for the rest of us.

I don't think there was anything in the early schema that would have impacted the way I use the system (apart for multi day internet or server outages) but plenty of benefits

Game sharing was a huge positive step, even though I felt that most publishers would ignore or disable (like game sharing on the DS).

Not having to swap physical disks would have made life much easier and increased my playing time. I'm fairly lazy when I've settled down for an evening in front of the TV. A usual XBox session involves playing what ever game is in the drive till i get bored (anything from 15 minutes up) switching to something downloaded so i don;t need to get up (normally trials). Getting bored again and flipping to TV or a movie.

The ability to choose from my whole library with leaving my seat would have been a revelation.

Also, my two year old has lost my Forza disk, which really sold this idea.

Microsoft reverses controversial game licensing policies

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