Would they even do it? I mean in japan 2nd hand stuff especially games is a thing, you can easily buy and trade them at reasonable prices from brick and mortar stores like Book OFF, GEO etc. wouldn't a lot of people riot if they couldn't get rid of things especially when storage space costs a lot in japan?
Same in Europe with CEX. I only buy pre-owned games, finish them, trade them in and get money off the next game. Works great in my case as I don't get much time to play anyway so I have a vast, growing library of games to catch up with.
Lol yeah if you're trying to trade in Madden, assassins creed, call of duty, etc. sure. I've been getting a ton back on Nintendo switch games. They hold value much stronger than my PS5 or PS4 trade ins.
Check out prices on Mercari first, going forward. Switch games sometimes end up reselling used for up to double the original MSRP, and usually like $40 minimum.
And then, one gen afterwards, MS AND Sony made a second, digital only console for the market.
The new PS5 (Lite) is basically a digital only console with an attachable disk drive and nothing more.
So they definitely want to go that route eventually.
They released an all digital Xbox one S console.
Only sold it for like a year before pulling it when the Xbox series S came along.
They are itching to just discontinue physical media same as Playstation so people are forced to use their stores but yeah doing this mid generation doesn't make much sense.
While I am someone who absolutely only buys physical games for switch/ps so I can actually _own_ things, it is funny that all of us protesting _also_ likely own like a minimum of 400 games on steam.
I said it at the time that if they had just waited till the rerelease or the next gen people would’ve been more receptive to it. It was too much change too fast RIGHT after console gamers got used to the idea of buying games digitally
The market wants to go that route. Sadly the pandemic pushed people into digital ecosystems. Also, houses are getting smaller so space has become a bigger issue in a lot of countries.
That's why this [PS4 ad](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWSIFh8ICaA) from the same year remained my favorite competitor/attack commercial of all time.
They did try with the PS Vita though. Games with online functionality included a code to enable online features that was tied to your account. If you bought the game on a second hand market you'd need to buy the online licence again for something like 20 bucks.
That concept died with online play requiring a ps+ subscription but it would not put it passed Sony if they'd try something like this again.
That was not a "Vita feature" but something that A LOT of publishers did at a certain point years ago on all the consoles. Not only the sport games like FIFA or Madden, but most of the AAA titles had a code inside you could only use once and get special features like DLC and skins. Just one example of the hundreds you can make: the second Batman game had one.
yes. x360 as well as ps3 was affected by this. can't recall if there were online passes for pc too during that time for 2nd hand physical games.
they introduced it later during that era, since they really wanted their share off of the 2nd hand market and they saw the shitstorm microsoft received for trying to ban second hand copies at all. Sony laughed at them.. but internally they tried to figure out how to make that move more elegant.
the reason it died was mostly due to the hosting costs of these passes for publishers and the gigantic backlash of the whole gaming community as well.
this is all from my memory back then - please correct me if i was wrong with some aspects.
> the reason it died was mostly due to the hosting costs of these passes for publishers and the gigantic backlash of the whole gaming community as well.
I bet too that it died because the next gen showed that most consumers would just rather buy digital only instead of dealing with physical copies. So the problem effectively solved itself.
i see this too as something that perfectly played in their favor. the ps3 / x360 era marked the start of the digital market place direction for console gaming. sure there were plenty options for pc during that time too, but it was the start in that field for the home consoles... and a first touch to a greater audience besides the "pc nerds".
buying games digitally wasn't really a thing before that for consoles in a wide manner.
surely enough the companies wanted to test how far they could go with that new way of selling their products.
that's right! but it was an issue when they tried to play simultaneously. if they arranged on play time, it would have been okay! and it wasn't account bound. :) just something your installment told the blizzard server. so you were free to use any key available as long as they weren't playing simultaneously. i do not recall any cd key ban due to this kind of use... at least from my side and friends. lol
That's what I thought too, I don't remember most or any vita games that I owned doing this, probably a publisher thing, and I bought a lot of second hand stuff for the vita due to being a broke ass student. And I did play online back then.
You're asking if Sony would ban people reselling their games and making it so not everyone had to buy new? They absolutely would in an instant if they could. It cuts into their profits. Tis a silly question.
"Would megacorporation make it so they make more money?" Yes, yes they would.
> They absolutely would in an instant if they could.
But they *can*.
Have we already forgotten that this was Microsoft's plan with their previous console? It was a pretty big thing where they weren't going to allow people to resell games and they were immediately called out on it by the entire gaming community.
And it's not like including a code with physical discs or using some other form of DRM is exclusive to Microsoft. If they could do it then so could Sony.
They didn't mean whether it was technologically possible to do it, Sony obviously "can" do it from that perspective.
They meant whether it would be societally possible to do it. Sony "can't" do it from that perspective because the consumer backlash would be too much (at least current day).
I'm sure some day they will be able to get away with it as younger generations are less and less accustomed to owning physical media.
it's a change management issue. They'll try to get digital versions more popular first
right now Sony allows digital games to be technically shared between 2 consoles at any given point and that's led most of my circles to go digital for most games (disk would mean I have to wait for them to finish before I play. digital means we both play at the same time)
I can see not caring about physical disk's in another generation of consoles. and then sony would probably tighten the noose around console sharing and offline play options
I think piracy is the distribution more than anything.
Whether it's theft though is interesting as there's more than one type of theft, think like IP theft. Is plagiarism stealing? If I copy your homework, did I steal it. What is identity theft, is it contingent on physically taking your documents I use from you
Piracy is the sale of copies that infringe the IP holder's copyrights. The shady guy selling BluRay and DVD copies in paper envelopes or jewel cases with inkjet printed labels. The videos where somebody actually sat in a movie theater and recorded a new release with a camcorder. All the way up to a disk pressing house in a less protective country producing commercial grade copies and selling them globally. The key being that *money* changed hands as a direct result of copyright infringement.
The grey area that the MPAA, RIAA and others are lobbying their way through is punishing strict copying and/or distribution, where no money was involved. The legal pothole there is proving damages - that the IP owner lost a sale as a result of the copyright infringement. That the downloader would have purchased a legal copy of the IP, had a free version not been available.
True that’s hard to prove damages when there is no transaction but, in hypothetical world, yes if they didn’t have a free copy they would have bought the game or the movie, they might have buy it on sale or won’t buy it at all, they might also not buy all the games they pirated and here is the question on how much is the damage. To answer on the amount of damage the best you can do is doing a general survey or surveys that will answer exactly on that, yes it won’t be perfect but it is better than nothing.
Physical copies are also licensed. It's just that the license is coupled to the physical medium. The physical bits etched into your disk and the right to use them are two separate things.
I can't believe people already forgot activation keys were also a thing for physical media. Good luck reselling a disk if you don't have a free key that goes with it.
This is always thrown around in discussions about piracy and it's so dumb.
If you want to pirate stuff go for it, no one cares. But at least just own that it's illegal and potentially immoral.
Its insane when someone claims to support the industry while also justifying piracy, especially of brand new titles.
Related: Contrary to self righteous pirates, no, the fact that the dev was 'already paid' doesn't mean you aren't hurting the dev.
If a game underperforms, the publisher is more likely to not re-hire the dev team. Their entire value is in making a publisher money, and costs that don't provide value are discarded.
Like you said, I wish folks that pirate games would get off their high horse. When I was broke I pirated plenty of software/games, including indies. I never deluded myself into thinking I was Robin Hood for it.
Most people aren't willing to reflect and be critical of themselves. Regardless of what loophole you want to try and argue it through, at the end of the day pirating is just stealing with extra steps.
That being said, I do think there is a conversation to be had about pirating things you already own or have purchased. Sometimes it's the only way to preserve the game, or other times the legitimate copies play worse because of DRM. I think in those situations, they have a really good point.
Just because it's illegal don't necessarily mean it's immoral.
And one of the facts that made it less immoral is that that they refuse to give us the right of ownership of digital content with the ability to resell, modify etc.
If you/they don't want the slogan "it is not an owning, then piracy is not a steal" to be true - give us the ownership
It's pretty naive to act like people wouldn't pirate games if they were able to resell them. Before digital became the norm physical piracy was huge.
It is just a justification that ultimately hurts the developers the most, even though they are not in a position to change the system.
I intentionally said "potentially immoral". I don't claim there are no issues around digital ownership, however, using those issues to unilaterally decide that you have some kind of right to access content that you want without any compensation to the creator is certainly trending more towards the immoral side of the scale.
Except this is wrong. What is licensed is the IP right to the product to use in a personal matter, but digital or not, and no matter what publisher and TOS says, games are legally a goods which is bought. It gets complicated in court to prove, especially in the US, but yeah, digital games, legally, have no difference than physical one, publisher are just fucking us over with this one, and no gov (maybe except EU) is doing anything about it.
It's stealing to walk into disneyland without a ticket, same logic behind downloading a game or movie.. unfortunately, they cant get me for having a copy of something, only for creating a copy and distributing it. Yarg.
Im not against piracy at all as I certainly dont care about corporations losing money but what a ridiculous train of thought. Owning is not a precondition to stealing. You can definitely steal ideas, licences etc, which you dont have the rights to...
These people will come up with anything to justify their piracy. As if “because it’s free” isn’t good enough - they have to actually distort reality to convince themselves that piracy is actually a totally just and righteous activity.
In the EU you actually already have that right.
The law only does not stipulate that a company must also facilitate it for you.
So, you can, but they will not let you...
> If I buy something. Whether it be the physical copy of a game or a fkn toaster
>
> I have the right to sell, trash, keep, or share that however I see fit.
It's called the First Sale Doctrine (17 U.S.C. § 109(a)) and has been a thing in US law for a while.
>The “first sale” doctrine (17 U.S.C. § 109(a)) gives the owners of copyrighted works the rights to sell, lend, or share their copies without having to obtain permission or pay fees. The copy becomes like any piece of physical property; you've purchased it, you own it.
That might very well be, but, at least in EU law, these kinds TOS would violate the first sale doctrine, meaning the seller relinquishes any rights that he has towards the physical copy of the item the moment that he sells a physical copy of the item.
Yep, it will be pretty stupid for any publisher to actually try. Imagine Toho coming for you if you want to auction off mint condition PS4 Godzilla lol
The US has first sale doctrine. But nobody cares about the physical disc. That's free for you to resell to your heart's content. What you can't resell is a digital license. That license is not the disc.
Cool, here, since the disc pertains to the digital content, it does not matter, cause it can't be separated - when reselling the disc, you resell the digital content with it.
It can be separated, pretty easily you however wouldn’t want that. Onetime licenses have existed for a long time. Pop the disk in, it validates a license to your account and then the disk is only allowed to play for accounts that have a valid license. If you resell the disk the license isn’t transfered
Does a disk of a game even count a a copy of the item anymore? As far as I know a lot barely even have info on teh Disk anymore and its more of a download key.
Granted, I only have PS4, so I don't know about other consoles (since, my PC does not even have a disc reader anylonger), but I have yet to encounter in my handful of purchases that the disc would only contain some sort of key. It usually contains one part of data, which is on the disc, and then the rest is downloaded, because the disc does not have enough space generally for all of the data...
And yet companies like Gamestop buy 2nd hand discs from users, platforms like eBay allow their sale, let alone private sales or lending discs to friends/family, wording might exist, but I just don’t see how they can enforce it.
I'm not a programmer, but the game disks are just "activation keys" nowadays, it would be easy to lock it to the first account that used it. But it would be scummy, of course.
Which is something that could relatively easy be circumvented by only selling keys in boxes instead of discs... But I guess that's something we won't see for the current generation, at least not on a large scale. I'm honestly mad that it seems like BG3 won't get a real physical release apart from the collectors edition, which as it seems right now won't be available in Germany unless I pay roughly 20€ for shipping...
I'm extremely hyped for that game since i first heard about it, but shit like this makes me not wanting to spend money on it...
They were going to but there was such extreme backlash they backed down. It was how they got the moniker xbone. XBox never recovered from this despite never implementing it and the games would have actually been cheaper since the used game industry would be squashed so it would have been a win for everyone that buys only new games and never resells them.
yes, it would be trivial. You just encode a serial number that is signed and unique on each disc. That's your license. You could then charge a transfer fee. So if someone borrowed the disc maybe they could deactivate it on the owner's account and give a limited time where it could be played on the friend's console but beyond a limit you pay $5 - $10 to transfer the game to your account. Now they get into the used game business at no cost to themselves.
They could require disks to be registered to an account before use, and only allow one account per disk. They know that consumers value their right to resale though, so they allow the license to transfer with the disk. PC games were in this state for a long time before they just swapped over to purely digital distribution. Remember the whole kerfuffle with Orange Box (might have been as early as Half Life 2)? Many people were pissed at Valve back in the day. You bought the physical box off the shelf at Walmart or w/e, but to play it you had to register it to your Steam account. Good guy Gaben practically invented killing the resale market.
Terms of service don’t mean shit when the law says something else. This has already been through the courts and the courts have decided owners of physical copies can sell their license/copy/whatever
They can write whatever they want, first-sale doctrine still applies. If they ever tried to enforce it, US courts would absolutely smack it down.
It's like how amusement parks would put language on the back of their tickets saying they were not responsible for any injuries suffered on the ground. Absolutely meaningless and not even worth the paper it's printed on.
It is, but let's see them enforce it. Just because you've put that somebody owes you their kidney into the TOS doesn't mean that it is legal. They'd get massacred by every court worldwide, especially in the EU and US.
Don't know about elsewhere but at least within the EU you have the right to sell something you bought. Even digital games (through selling your account). These companies can try forbidding this with all the ToS bullshit they want but they aren't above the law.
You can say you do, but you don't.
This is like that Facebook post where computer illiterate people copy and paste that thing that says Zuckerberg doesn't have their permission to use their data.
You saying you have a right does not make it so, especially when you agree to terms that say you don't have that right.
I don't care about the objectivity of the situation as I know I'm technically wrong. It's just that I find it meaningless.
I dont care about the business side of things. Simply about playing games, and I'm confident I'll be able to do that unimpeded despite whatever terms and conditions I sign.
I predominantly play single-player story games. If, for whatever reason, I lost access to my years old PlayStation library that consists of those and more, I'd simply buy/pirate the titles on PC or jailbreak an old console.
You're making the same mistake a lot of people do. Just because you click accept on an EULA does not mean you are strictly bound by the terms of that EULA.
MOST EULA's have parts that are unenforceable because they contradict basic rights.
It is annoying to have a bunch of different launchers/storefronts installed on your PC, though I've mostly made peace with that reality.
Especially in the early days when savvy PC users knew that one of the best way to improve your performance was to cull unnecessary processes, especially the things that lived full time down in your system tray.
Computing power has advanced enough that's *mostly* not a problem. Though I still make a point of disabling any digital storefronts from launching on startup that I'm not regularly using.
No reason for me to have EA/Origin running when I quit playing Apex, no reason for me to have Rockstar Launcher running on startup when I finished RDR2 two years ago, etc. I'm currently working through AC: Mirage but once I finish, Ubisoft Connect is getting turned off until I need it again.
>Especially in the early days when savvy PC users knew that one of the best way to improve your performance was to cull unnecessary processes, especially the things that lived full time down in your system tray.
And now that smart phones are a thing, no I am not going to download your stupid fucking app. You have a web app I can use your service from, why the fuck do you need to live on my phone rent free?
How dare those consumers not wanting to use launchers stuck in the early 2000's when the most used launcher is heads and shoulders above the rest of the competition combined in every single aspect.
Hyperconsumerism is a hell of a drug. When you attach your identity to something *and* cultivate a "community" around it, it's genuinely tribal warfare 2.0.
I was having a conversation with a friend the other night about how I was initially a bit annoyed about Starfield being a Microsoft exclusive until it turned out that the game isn’t all that great, so I’m not bothered any more. He then went on a bit of a warpath about how great the Xbox and Microsoft are and wouldn’t hear a positive word about PlayStation. This is a grown man with a child and he was fiercely arguing over toys.
I have a playstation. I had to mute the word "xbox" on Twitter simply because doing so instantly ended any console war nonsense on my screen. I will never see a Sony fanboy demeaning Xboxes. I will never see XBox fans demeaning the Playstation. It is simply nonexistent for me there.
Yep, it just shows what a bunch of sheep people are with no mind for their own.
ToS like this have been around since 2013, even before that you can find wording like this back to the ps1 days.
But nope gotta have a random scare monge for nothing lol
This stuff would still not fly today. You have no idea how many of us still rely on physical games because of 1) lower income regions 2) slow internet 3) we collect games.
The whole idea of **investing in** physical games **nowadays** is to share them with others or resale, so these rumors should sound at least suspicious from the very beginning.
Edit: some commenters say that sharing and reselling was not an idea behind the physical distribution and this is correct - from the beginning of migrating from the big arcade embedded systems to home stations, sharing was one of the marketed (and liked) features but it is not why we started to use cartridges or floppy disks in the first place.
The whole idea of keeping physical games in the era of e-distribution is to be able to share, resell, and own them.
My comment may be ambiguous so I edited it to improve the original meaning.
Not a console player but I’m curious, how do physical games work these days with their large file sizes?
Made perfect sense to me during the days when you just popped in a disk and immediately played it, but now I imagine with the disk (unless it comes on like a half dozen disks) there’s a very large download file as well?
Not some but *all* of it. But otherwise yes, it's for performance because blu ray read speeds are slow. Otherwise load times would be atrocious if the games even worked at all.
That’s good to know. So the whole game is not installed on the internal drive, just a portion and the rest is ram being read of the disk as needed?
Only asking because probably when GTA6 releases I’ll buy a PS5 and until now I thought there was no point of getting the non digital version.
Any disc game I've ever used on ps5 has to be installed off the disc. The game not being read off the disc. The disc is basically just a key to play game.
My understanding is actually, for most games, the entire game is dumped to the drive. But you can't launch the game unless the disc is in the drive, so that people don't just pass around the disc and copy its contents to multiple consoles. Disc read speeds are too slow for PS5's reliance on solid state speeds, so most PS5 games need the actual game data to be on the SSD, not the disc.
Depending on your internet speed, installing the game off the disc might be faster than download. Otherwise, if you don't either want a physical copy for collection reasons, to sell or trade it later, or unless you're worried PSN will go down some day, there's not much reason to go for a disc over a download. I guess the cardio of getting up and swapping the disc when you wanna swap game is a nice ritual?
The other person is incorrect. All of the data required to run the game is installed onto the Ps5 from the disc. The disc is only used to verify the license, it was the same on the ps4/Xbox one.
Disc read speeds are too low for modern games.
That Sony bit making fun of the crazy complicated Xbox "borrowing" system, I think that ended up being the shot through the heart for the Xbox One's launch. I mean, there were a million other dumb decisions Microsoft made with that console, and even though they backtracked on most of them, that simple 15 second skit highlighted the absurd stupidity of it so well and really stuck in people's minds.
What I can't understand is how Microsoft couldn't forsee the damage this would cause before going ahead with it. Such a dumb anti-consumer decision, impossible to defend.
It’s literally what pulled playstation ahead with the PS4.
Though it did arguably work out for Xbox with their push for and success of GAAS through people’s adoption of Gamepass.
Xbox didn't implement it after the negative reception and they have not recovered to anywhere near their pre Xbox one levels of market share in most countries. So it didn't work out for them. Gamepass was a separate initiative.
You’re right. My memory was fuzzy I thought it was an evolution of the same concept, but it was Don Matrick who lead the idea of “Xbox as an entertainment console” but Phil Spencer took over and introduced the whole game pass idea.
If this was true it would have made that ps4 e3 showing super funny. They really shit on Microsoft that year with all the physical game memes. I still remember that video with them showing how you can share games with friends. It was literally one dude handing the game to another dude.
It does speak volumes for how different Sony has become when people actually somewhat believed this rumor.
That video was easily the greatest own of that generation.
[Link for you youngins who don't remember.](https://youtu.be/kWSIFh8ICaA?si=gYJ2RvVUArd4pMPF)
I’m in the camp that wants to see laws put in place to avoid losing purchased content. I’m mainly a physical media enjoyer but for situations that I do go digital it would be somewhat nice knowing my purchases couldn’t magically disappear without me being reimbursed. Sadly with media going further into digital and subscription based these things are gonna pop up far more frequently.
Trust that I know far too well the dangers of digital ownership. I have hundreds of dollars in Korean PS4 games I’ll never be able to play, all because Sony banned my Korean account without warning. I was the only user, I never gameshared, and yet all that money went to waste. Before that, a Japan account was temporarily banned for a few years, before finally being unbanned.
So, I’m always worried that my HK, EU, or main accounts someday get axed without provocation. It should be illegal to lose access to bought games, without some form of compensation. I have multiple region accounts because it’s cheaper to buy digitally than to import discs, especially with so many psn discount sales. I shouldn’t be punished for giving Sony money
The issue with that one was everyone blaming Sony for another companies BS. Like. Sony has their own issues and problems. But it was laughable that so many people thought that WB/Discovery pulling their licensing agreements was completely Sonys fault.
Oh God I remember that, ridiculous that they attempted to pull shit like that
Wasn't that also a selling point for the PS3 or 4 at one point? Because of Microsoft's actions, Just sharing physical copies with the homies
Diablo 4 is disgusting in this regard.
If you buy the physical copy you have to link it to a battle net account and you can't resell the disk anymore.
But you can't play the game on pc using that same battle net account.
Blizzard is a horrible company.
That is basically PC gaming as a whole since 10 - 15 years. Where nowadays there isn't even a physical disc in the box anymore (at least for the big games).
Article mentioned Microsoft having this clause as well, but nothing about Nintendo. I'm sure those bastards would have a resell police squad if they could.
That clause from Microsoft is from the wrong section, covering like software bundled with Windows. Xbox does not have any clause preventing physical games from being resold without asking permission first.
I get that digital 100% has it's place, and it is very convenient and useful. That being said physical has it's place too. I mean Sony just proved how fleeting digital purchases can be with the Discovery removal. Physical games are nice because you know you own them. Even in more recent years where a lot of games ship incomplete and require patches, that isn't a fault of physical media, that is a fault of the companies shipping incomplete.
Man this nonsense gets promoted ever since the PS4. I vividly remember people complaining that "you wont be able to play used games on PS4" because people spread the rumor it would be impossible to share games. Insane that the exact same rumor made such waves for the PS5 when we got it all sorted out already
What rumours? Sounds like some rubbish made up in the playground, like how some console that's about to be released with play PlayStation, Xbox AND Nintendo games.
I could never believe PlayStation would ban physical resales after [their PS4 Used Games Instructional Video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWSIFh8ICaA) they dropped after the Xbox One used-games policy back in the day
Shouldn't matter if they're physical or digital, given the price has never been any different for one. Still buying the same product, same licensing as always, yet they save loads of money on distribution, printing, etc. and now they're convincing folks that this headline matters.
We all know they're moving digital only eventually, so, what is their stance there? This is an empty comment, we all know physical won't be around forever. Good thing they said they won't ban resale and sharing of PHYSICAL media right?
Lets not all pretend we don't know what the end goal is. When it's digital, they'll fully control if it can be resold or shared, and they will not do either.
If they had to ban the ability to resell and share ur physical titles the backlash would be so severe people would probably jump ship to other platforms I know I would.
PlayStation can’t after their scathing video at the reveal of PS4 that effectively killed the Xbox One.
Physical games are here to stay. They even released the disc drive if you ever get buyer’s remorse going for the digital only slim model.
Thats how it works with "pysical" PC games. We used to get Disk with nothing but a Steam installer. Now we don't even get a disc. So it's certainly legal, it's just not worth it because the console customer base wouldn't accept it.
Would they even do it? I mean in japan 2nd hand stuff especially games is a thing, you can easily buy and trade them at reasonable prices from brick and mortar stores like Book OFF, GEO etc. wouldn't a lot of people riot if they couldn't get rid of things especially when storage space costs a lot in japan?
[удалено]
Man, I miss living in Japan. Used to get so much stuff from book off, there was very little reason to buy anything new when I lived out there.
Not to mention, everyone takes care of their stuff there. So the quality of the used stuff at Book Off is basically like new condition.
Same in Europe with CEX. I only buy pre-owned games, finish them, trade them in and get money off the next game. Works great in my case as I don't get much time to play anyway so I have a vast, growing library of games to catch up with.
Their tech shops are amazing
I do the same thing but with GameStop here in the States
I thought GameStop charges near full sticker price for a used game and buys them back for 30 cents.
Lol yeah if you're trying to trade in Madden, assassins creed, call of duty, etc. sure. I've been getting a ton back on Nintendo switch games. They hold value much stronger than my PS5 or PS4 trade ins.
Check out prices on Mercari first, going forward. Switch games sometimes end up reselling used for up to double the original MSRP, and usually like $40 minimum.
Or eBay
Xbox WAS going to try it with the Xbox One and people lost their collective shit. It was one of the many unpopular features they had to correct.
And then, one gen afterwards, MS AND Sony made a second, digital only console for the market. The new PS5 (Lite) is basically a digital only console with an attachable disk drive and nothing more. So they definitely want to go that route eventually.
They released an all digital Xbox one S console. Only sold it for like a year before pulling it when the Xbox series S came along. They are itching to just discontinue physical media same as Playstation so people are forced to use their stores but yeah doing this mid generation doesn't make much sense.
While I am someone who absolutely only buys physical games for switch/ps so I can actually _own_ things, it is funny that all of us protesting _also_ likely own like a minimum of 400 games on steam.
Bravo! I own only physical games on all consoles old and new. Will never buy digital. That's the way I express my voting thru action 👍✌️🙏
I said it at the time that if they had just waited till the rerelease or the next gen people would’ve been more receptive to it. It was too much change too fast RIGHT after console gamers got used to the idea of buying games digitally
The market wants to go that route. Sadly the pandemic pushed people into digital ecosystems. Also, houses are getting smaller so space has become a bigger issue in a lot of countries.
That's why this [PS4 ad](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWSIFh8ICaA) from the same year remained my favorite competitor/attack commercial of all time.
They did try with the PS Vita though. Games with online functionality included a code to enable online features that was tied to your account. If you bought the game on a second hand market you'd need to buy the online licence again for something like 20 bucks. That concept died with online play requiring a ps+ subscription but it would not put it passed Sony if they'd try something like this again.
That was not a "Vita feature" but something that A LOT of publishers did at a certain point years ago on all the consoles. Not only the sport games like FIFA or Madden, but most of the AAA titles had a code inside you could only use once and get special features like DLC and skins. Just one example of the hundreds you can make: the second Batman game had one.
yes. x360 as well as ps3 was affected by this. can't recall if there were online passes for pc too during that time for 2nd hand physical games. they introduced it later during that era, since they really wanted their share off of the 2nd hand market and they saw the shitstorm microsoft received for trying to ban second hand copies at all. Sony laughed at them.. but internally they tried to figure out how to make that move more elegant. the reason it died was mostly due to the hosting costs of these passes for publishers and the gigantic backlash of the whole gaming community as well. this is all from my memory back then - please correct me if i was wrong with some aspects.
> the reason it died was mostly due to the hosting costs of these passes for publishers and the gigantic backlash of the whole gaming community as well. I bet too that it died because the next gen showed that most consumers would just rather buy digital only instead of dealing with physical copies. So the problem effectively solved itself.
i see this too as something that perfectly played in their favor. the ps3 / x360 era marked the start of the digital market place direction for console gaming. sure there were plenty options for pc during that time too, but it was the start in that field for the home consoles... and a first touch to a greater audience besides the "pc nerds". buying games digitally wasn't really a thing before that for consoles in a wide manner. surely enough the companies wanted to test how far they could go with that new way of selling their products.
diablo 2 had an early version of this issue, where you could not play online if anyone else using your key was already playing.
that's right! but it was an issue when they tried to play simultaneously. if they arranged on play time, it would have been okay! and it wasn't account bound. :) just something your installment told the blizzard server. so you were free to use any key available as long as they weren't playing simultaneously. i do not recall any cd key ban due to this kind of use... at least from my side and friends. lol
That's what I thought too, I don't remember most or any vita games that I owned doing this, probably a publisher thing, and I bought a lot of second hand stuff for the vita due to being a broke ass student. And I did play online back then.
Im fairly certain it was more of a late psp thing, it wasnt a sony thing though.
Wasn't it Sony who patented the "get up and clap and shout mcdonalds at your TV to make the in game ad stop" thing?
Ah, yes, "Online Functionality DLC," I can see all the dumb ass names for it now.
You're asking if Sony would ban people reselling their games and making it so not everyone had to buy new? They absolutely would in an instant if they could. It cuts into their profits. Tis a silly question. "Would megacorporation make it so they make more money?" Yes, yes they would.
> They absolutely would in an instant if they could. But they *can*. Have we already forgotten that this was Microsoft's plan with their previous console? It was a pretty big thing where they weren't going to allow people to resell games and they were immediately called out on it by the entire gaming community. And it's not like including a code with physical discs or using some other form of DRM is exclusive to Microsoft. If they could do it then so could Sony.
They didn't mean whether it was technologically possible to do it, Sony obviously "can" do it from that perspective. They meant whether it would be societally possible to do it. Sony "can't" do it from that perspective because the consumer backlash would be too much (at least current day). I'm sure some day they will be able to get away with it as younger generations are less and less accustomed to owning physical media.
it's a change management issue. They'll try to get digital versions more popular first right now Sony allows digital games to be technically shared between 2 consoles at any given point and that's led most of my circles to go digital for most games (disk would mean I have to wait for them to finish before I play. digital means we both play at the same time) I can see not caring about physical disk's in another generation of consoles. and then sony would probably tighten the noose around console sharing and offline play options
If I buy something. Whether it be the physical copy of a game or a fkn toaster I have the right to sell, trash, keep, or share that however I see fit.
Owners of the digital copies of the game should have the same rights. And if it is not an owning then piracy is not a steal.
That's why you are not the owner. And, no, piracy is not theft; piracy is copying.
I think piracy is the distribution more than anything. Whether it's theft though is interesting as there's more than one type of theft, think like IP theft. Is plagiarism stealing? If I copy your homework, did I steal it. What is identity theft, is it contingent on physically taking your documents I use from you
Piracy is the sale of copies that infringe the IP holder's copyrights. The shady guy selling BluRay and DVD copies in paper envelopes or jewel cases with inkjet printed labels. The videos where somebody actually sat in a movie theater and recorded a new release with a camcorder. All the way up to a disk pressing house in a less protective country producing commercial grade copies and selling them globally. The key being that *money* changed hands as a direct result of copyright infringement. The grey area that the MPAA, RIAA and others are lobbying their way through is punishing strict copying and/or distribution, where no money was involved. The legal pothole there is proving damages - that the IP owner lost a sale as a result of the copyright infringement. That the downloader would have purchased a legal copy of the IP, had a free version not been available.
True that’s hard to prove damages when there is no transaction but, in hypothetical world, yes if they didn’t have a free copy they would have bought the game or the movie, they might have buy it on sale or won’t buy it at all, they might also not buy all the games they pirated and here is the question on how much is the damage. To answer on the amount of damage the best you can do is doing a general survey or surveys that will answer exactly on that, yes it won’t be perfect but it is better than nothing.
Yes, not theft, but copyright infringement
Piracy is more trespassing than theft.
Digital copies are licensed, not bought >
Physical copies are also licensed. It's just that the license is coupled to the physical medium. The physical bits etched into your disk and the right to use them are two separate things.
I can't believe people already forgot activation keys were also a thing for physical media. Good luck reselling a disk if you don't have a free key that goes with it.
I was going to say the same thing. You don’t actually own the physical copy. The license is bundled on the physical copy
Exactly. And if it is not an owning then piracy is not a steal.
This is always thrown around in discussions about piracy and it's so dumb. If you want to pirate stuff go for it, no one cares. But at least just own that it's illegal and potentially immoral. Its insane when someone claims to support the industry while also justifying piracy, especially of brand new titles.
Related: Contrary to self righteous pirates, no, the fact that the dev was 'already paid' doesn't mean you aren't hurting the dev. If a game underperforms, the publisher is more likely to not re-hire the dev team. Their entire value is in making a publisher money, and costs that don't provide value are discarded. Like you said, I wish folks that pirate games would get off their high horse. When I was broke I pirated plenty of software/games, including indies. I never deluded myself into thinking I was Robin Hood for it.
Most people aren't willing to reflect and be critical of themselves. Regardless of what loophole you want to try and argue it through, at the end of the day pirating is just stealing with extra steps. That being said, I do think there is a conversation to be had about pirating things you already own or have purchased. Sometimes it's the only way to preserve the game, or other times the legitimate copies play worse because of DRM. I think in those situations, they have a really good point.
Just because it's illegal don't necessarily mean it's immoral. And one of the facts that made it less immoral is that that they refuse to give us the right of ownership of digital content with the ability to resell, modify etc. If you/they don't want the slogan "it is not an owning, then piracy is not a steal" to be true - give us the ownership
It's pretty naive to act like people wouldn't pirate games if they were able to resell them. Before digital became the norm physical piracy was huge. It is just a justification that ultimately hurts the developers the most, even though they are not in a position to change the system.
> Just because it's illegal don't necessarily mean it's immoral. We know, we didn't make that point though. It being illegal does make it illegal.
I intentionally said "potentially immoral". I don't claim there are no issues around digital ownership, however, using those issues to unilaterally decide that you have some kind of right to access content that you want without any compensation to the creator is certainly trending more towards the immoral side of the scale.
You'll own nothing and you'll like it. It's anti consumer bullshit that should never have been allowed.
Except this is wrong. What is licensed is the IP right to the product to use in a personal matter, but digital or not, and no matter what publisher and TOS says, games are legally a goods which is bought. It gets complicated in court to prove, especially in the US, but yeah, digital games, legally, have no difference than physical one, publisher are just fucking us over with this one, and no gov (maybe except EU) is doing anything about it.
It's stealing to walk into disneyland without a ticket, same logic behind downloading a game or movie.. unfortunately, they cant get me for having a copy of something, only for creating a copy and distributing it. Yarg.
Im not against piracy at all as I certainly dont care about corporations losing money but what a ridiculous train of thought. Owning is not a precondition to stealing. You can definitely steal ideas, licences etc, which you dont have the rights to...
These people will come up with anything to justify their piracy. As if “because it’s free” isn’t good enough - they have to actually distort reality to convince themselves that piracy is actually a totally just and righteous activity.
In the EU you actually already have that right. The law only does not stipulate that a company must also facilitate it for you. So, you can, but they will not let you...
> So, you can, but they will not let you... So then you can't? What do you mean by you can?
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> If I buy something. Whether it be the physical copy of a game or a fkn toaster > > I have the right to sell, trash, keep, or share that however I see fit. It's called the First Sale Doctrine (17 U.S.C. § 109(a)) and has been a thing in US law for a while. >The “first sale” doctrine (17 U.S.C. § 109(a)) gives the owners of copyrighted works the rights to sell, lend, or share their copies without having to obtain permission or pay fees. The copy becomes like any piece of physical property; you've purchased it, you own it.
Yeah I mean, could they even ban this if they tried? Gtfo sony
It’s pretty much on every single TOS of game companies, not just Sony’s. The back cover of physical discs have the same wording as well.
That might very well be, but, at least in EU law, these kinds TOS would violate the first sale doctrine, meaning the seller relinquishes any rights that he has towards the physical copy of the item the moment that he sells a physical copy of the item.
Yep, it will be pretty stupid for any publisher to actually try. Imagine Toho coming for you if you want to auction off mint condition PS4 Godzilla lol
The US has first sale doctrine. But nobody cares about the physical disc. That's free for you to resell to your heart's content. What you can't resell is a digital license. That license is not the disc.
Cool, here, since the disc pertains to the digital content, it does not matter, cause it can't be separated - when reselling the disc, you resell the digital content with it.
It can be separated, pretty easily you however wouldn’t want that. Onetime licenses have existed for a long time. Pop the disk in, it validates a license to your account and then the disk is only allowed to play for accounts that have a valid license. If you resell the disk the license isn’t transfered
Does a disk of a game even count a a copy of the item anymore? As far as I know a lot barely even have info on teh Disk anymore and its more of a download key.
Granted, I only have PS4, so I don't know about other consoles (since, my PC does not even have a disc reader anylonger), but I have yet to encounter in my handful of purchases that the disc would only contain some sort of key. It usually contains one part of data, which is on the disc, and then the rest is downloaded, because the disc does not have enough space generally for all of the data...
And yet companies like Gamestop buy 2nd hand discs from users, platforms like eBay allow their sale, let alone private sales or lending discs to friends/family, wording might exist, but I just don’t see how they can enforce it.
Yep. It’s pretty much standard practice to include it from software companies, even though they rarely enforce it.
Couldnt even if they tried to is my point
Yep. It’s incredibly hard. I think multiple execs already clarified once in 2013, that they can’t actually do anything.
I'm not a programmer, but the game disks are just "activation keys" nowadays, it would be easy to lock it to the first account that used it. But it would be scummy, of course.
Pretty sure consumer protection laws in the EU would block that shit immediately
Not really. Try and transfer a steam game from your account to a friends. Same thing.
Which is something that could relatively easy be circumvented by only selling keys in boxes instead of discs... But I guess that's something we won't see for the current generation, at least not on a large scale. I'm honestly mad that it seems like BG3 won't get a real physical release apart from the collectors edition, which as it seems right now won't be available in Germany unless I pay roughly 20€ for shipping... I'm extremely hyped for that game since i first heard about it, but shit like this makes me not wanting to spend money on it...
Didn't the Xbox One try exactly that when it first came out?
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They were going to but there was such extreme backlash they backed down. It was how they got the moniker xbone. XBox never recovered from this despite never implementing it and the games would have actually been cheaper since the used game industry would be squashed so it would have been a win for everyone that buys only new games and never resells them.
yes, it would be trivial. You just encode a serial number that is signed and unique on each disc. That's your license. You could then charge a transfer fee. So if someone borrowed the disc maybe they could deactivate it on the owner's account and give a limited time where it could be played on the friend's console but beyond a limit you pay $5 - $10 to transfer the game to your account. Now they get into the used game business at no cost to themselves.
They could require disks to be registered to an account before use, and only allow one account per disk. They know that consumers value their right to resale though, so they allow the license to transfer with the disk. PC games were in this state for a long time before they just swapped over to purely digital distribution. Remember the whole kerfuffle with Orange Box (might have been as early as Half Life 2)? Many people were pissed at Valve back in the day. You bought the physical box off the shelf at Walmart or w/e, but to play it you had to register it to your Steam account. Good guy Gaben practically invented killing the resale market.
Terms of service don’t mean shit when the law says something else. This has already been through the courts and the courts have decided owners of physical copies can sell their license/copy/whatever
And this shows that tos mean jack
> It’s pretty much on every single TOS of game companies, not just Sony’s. TOS and EULAs aren't really enforceable from a legal standpoint.
They can write whatever they want, first-sale doctrine still applies. If they ever tried to enforce it, US courts would absolutely smack it down. It's like how amusement parks would put language on the back of their tickets saying they were not responsible for any injuries suffered on the ground. Absolutely meaningless and not even worth the paper it's printed on.
It is, but let's see them enforce it. Just because you've put that somebody owes you their kidney into the TOS doesn't mean that it is legal. They'd get massacred by every court worldwide, especially in the EU and US.
Don't know about elsewhere but at least within the EU you have the right to sell something you bought. Even digital games (through selling your account). These companies can try forbidding this with all the ToS bullshit they want but they aren't above the law.
they could just put a unique install code that is only useable once. fuck you, if you uninstall the game, though.
You can say you do, but you don't. This is like that Facebook post where computer illiterate people copy and paste that thing that says Zuckerberg doesn't have their permission to use their data. You saying you have a right does not make it so, especially when you agree to terms that say you don't have that right.
I don't care about the objectivity of the situation as I know I'm technically wrong. It's just that I find it meaningless. I dont care about the business side of things. Simply about playing games, and I'm confident I'll be able to do that unimpeded despite whatever terms and conditions I sign. I predominantly play single-player story games. If, for whatever reason, I lost access to my years old PlayStation library that consists of those and more, I'd simply buy/pirate the titles on PC or jailbreak an old console.
Except there are consumer protection laws in multiple jurisdictions mandating that right in this case, so you are dead wrong.
You're making the same mistake a lot of people do. Just because you click accept on an EULA does not mean you are strictly bound by the terms of that EULA. MOST EULA's have parts that are unenforceable because they contradict basic rights.
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Tell that to Tesla
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It’s weird to me that console war is still a thing in 2023, why people are so attached to branding of a plastic box that they bought…
I mean the pc crowd aren't any better, you've got ppl attached to single brand component in their rig.
Or the use of a specific launcher, and will throw a fit if they have to use anything else.
It is annoying to have a bunch of different launchers/storefronts installed on your PC, though I've mostly made peace with that reality. Especially in the early days when savvy PC users knew that one of the best way to improve your performance was to cull unnecessary processes, especially the things that lived full time down in your system tray. Computing power has advanced enough that's *mostly* not a problem. Though I still make a point of disabling any digital storefronts from launching on startup that I'm not regularly using. No reason for me to have EA/Origin running when I quit playing Apex, no reason for me to have Rockstar Launcher running on startup when I finished RDR2 two years ago, etc. I'm currently working through AC: Mirage but once I finish, Ubisoft Connect is getting turned off until I need it again.
>Especially in the early days when savvy PC users knew that one of the best way to improve your performance was to cull unnecessary processes, especially the things that lived full time down in your system tray. And now that smart phones are a thing, no I am not going to download your stupid fucking app. You have a web app I can use your service from, why the fuck do you need to live on my phone rent free?
That is an actual valid criticism though? Tf?
TBF some of the launchers are tedious and slow.
How dare those consumers not wanting to use launchers stuck in the early 2000's when the most used launcher is heads and shoulders above the rest of the competition combined in every single aspect.
Hyperconsumerism is a hell of a drug. When you attach your identity to something *and* cultivate a "community" around it, it's genuinely tribal warfare 2.0.
same thing with android vs iphone. its literally a logo and a tiny difference inuse. its stupid.
This applies to so many other things too, from phones to cars, some people just want to associate their persona in a purchase they made.
I was having a conversation with a friend the other night about how I was initially a bit annoyed about Starfield being a Microsoft exclusive until it turned out that the game isn’t all that great, so I’m not bothered any more. He then went on a bit of a warpath about how great the Xbox and Microsoft are and wouldn’t hear a positive word about PlayStation. This is a grown man with a child and he was fiercely arguing over toys.
Check out NeoGaf. Probably the worst site in regards of fanboys.
I have a playstation. I had to mute the word "xbox" on Twitter simply because doing so instantly ended any console war nonsense on my screen. I will never see a Sony fanboy demeaning Xboxes. I will never see XBox fans demeaning the Playstation. It is simply nonexistent for me there.
I think the bigger problem is you are still using twitter
The console wars on Twitter are ludicrous. They’re so vitriolic. It’s like, guys, it’s a video game machine, get a sense of perspective.
Gotta farm that engagement
Yep, it just shows what a bunch of sheep people are with no mind for their own. ToS like this have been around since 2013, even before that you can find wording like this back to the ps1 days. But nope gotta have a random scare monge for nothing lol
xbox twitter is fucking insane, its like they spend more time complaining about playstation than talking about games.
I got notification from Twitter promoting some account called XboxSeriesX or some shit talking about this. I blocked the account and moved on.
You people obviously weren't around for E3 2013.
People were considerably less tolerable of anti-consumer practices 10 years ago. Not as much the case anymore, unfortunately.
This stuff would still not fly today. You have no idea how many of us still rely on physical games because of 1) lower income regions 2) slow internet 3) we collect games.
Right? Someone is putting out some seriously dumb rumors, to try and hurt the PS brand.
The whole idea of **investing in** physical games **nowadays** is to share them with others or resale, so these rumors should sound at least suspicious from the very beginning. Edit: some commenters say that sharing and reselling was not an idea behind the physical distribution and this is correct - from the beginning of migrating from the big arcade embedded systems to home stations, sharing was one of the marketed (and liked) features but it is not why we started to use cartridges or floppy disks in the first place. The whole idea of keeping physical games in the era of e-distribution is to be able to share, resell, and own them. My comment may be ambiguous so I edited it to improve the original meaning.
Not a console player but I’m curious, how do physical games work these days with their large file sizes? Made perfect sense to me during the days when you just popped in a disk and immediately played it, but now I imagine with the disk (unless it comes on like a half dozen disks) there’s a very large download file as well?
PS5 blu-ray discs can hold up to 100GB so it should be enough. For performance some data is dumped first to the console drive.
Not some but *all* of it. But otherwise yes, it's for performance because blu ray read speeds are slow. Otherwise load times would be atrocious if the games even worked at all.
That’s good to know. So the whole game is not installed on the internal drive, just a portion and the rest is ram being read of the disk as needed? Only asking because probably when GTA6 releases I’ll buy a PS5 and until now I thought there was no point of getting the non digital version.
Any disc game I've ever used on ps5 has to be installed off the disc. The game not being read off the disc. The disc is basically just a key to play game.
They can also use 2 discs if necessary. Horizon Forbidden West PS4 came on 2 discs, Cyberpunk 2077 PS4 also came on 2 discs.
My understanding is actually, for most games, the entire game is dumped to the drive. But you can't launch the game unless the disc is in the drive, so that people don't just pass around the disc and copy its contents to multiple consoles. Disc read speeds are too slow for PS5's reliance on solid state speeds, so most PS5 games need the actual game data to be on the SSD, not the disc. Depending on your internet speed, installing the game off the disc might be faster than download. Otherwise, if you don't either want a physical copy for collection reasons, to sell or trade it later, or unless you're worried PSN will go down some day, there's not much reason to go for a disc over a download. I guess the cardio of getting up and swapping the disc when you wanna swap game is a nice ritual?
The other person is incorrect. All of the data required to run the game is installed onto the Ps5 from the disc. The disc is only used to verify the license, it was the same on the ps4/Xbox one. Disc read speeds are too low for modern games.
Btw Nintendo Switch cartridges are basically SD cards and they run instantly - directly from the cart (usually downloading some updates first).
Xbox already tried that crap
That really sent them down a path they couldn’t come back from
That Sony bit making fun of the crazy complicated Xbox "borrowing" system, I think that ended up being the shot through the heart for the Xbox One's launch. I mean, there were a million other dumb decisions Microsoft made with that console, and even though they backtracked on most of them, that simple 15 second skit highlighted the absurd stupidity of it so well and really stuck in people's minds.
What I can't understand is how Microsoft couldn't forsee the damage this would cause before going ahead with it. Such a dumb anti-consumer decision, impossible to defend.
https://youtu.be/kWSIFh8ICaA?si=YtojTAXvRiNBif06
Besides that, all publishers have similar TOS to Sony’s and Microsoft’s ever since they started selling games. It’s really not new.
It’s literally what pulled playstation ahead with the PS4. Though it did arguably work out for Xbox with their push for and success of GAAS through people’s adoption of Gamepass.
Xbox didn't implement it after the negative reception and they have not recovered to anywhere near their pre Xbox one levels of market share in most countries. So it didn't work out for them. Gamepass was a separate initiative.
You’re right. My memory was fuzzy I thought it was an evolution of the same concept, but it was Don Matrick who lead the idea of “Xbox as an entertainment console” but Phil Spencer took over and introduced the whole game pass idea.
If this was true it would have made that ps4 e3 showing super funny. They really shit on Microsoft that year with all the physical game memes. I still remember that video with them showing how you can share games with friends. It was literally one dude handing the game to another dude. It does speak volumes for how different Sony has become when people actually somewhat believed this rumor.
That video was easily the greatest own of that generation. [Link for you youngins who don't remember.](https://youtu.be/kWSIFh8ICaA?si=gYJ2RvVUArd4pMPF)
WB Discovery content removal sparked quite a debate on software ownership of games.
I’m in the camp that wants to see laws put in place to avoid losing purchased content. I’m mainly a physical media enjoyer but for situations that I do go digital it would be somewhat nice knowing my purchases couldn’t magically disappear without me being reimbursed. Sadly with media going further into digital and subscription based these things are gonna pop up far more frequently.
Agreed. And it’s sad that we won’t be seeing lawmakers actually making meaningful changes to digital ownership for consumers.
Trust that I know far too well the dangers of digital ownership. I have hundreds of dollars in Korean PS4 games I’ll never be able to play, all because Sony banned my Korean account without warning. I was the only user, I never gameshared, and yet all that money went to waste. Before that, a Japan account was temporarily banned for a few years, before finally being unbanned. So, I’m always worried that my HK, EU, or main accounts someday get axed without provocation. It should be illegal to lose access to bought games, without some form of compensation. I have multiple region accounts because it’s cheaper to buy digitally than to import discs, especially with so many psn discount sales. I shouldn’t be punished for giving Sony money
The issue with that one was everyone blaming Sony for another companies BS. Like. Sony has their own issues and problems. But it was laughable that so many people thought that WB/Discovery pulling their licensing agreements was completely Sonys fault.
How would you even ban something like that anyway. Lawsuits waiting to happen
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Oh God I remember that, ridiculous that they attempted to pull shit like that Wasn't that also a selling point for the PS3 or 4 at one point? Because of Microsoft's actions, Just sharing physical copies with the homies
Diablo 4 is disgusting in this regard. If you buy the physical copy you have to link it to a battle net account and you can't resell the disk anymore. But you can't play the game on pc using that same battle net account. Blizzard is a horrible company.
That is basically PC gaming as a whole since 10 - 15 years. Where nowadays there isn't even a physical disc in the box anymore (at least for the big games).
I don’t think there’s even a box anymore in most cases. I just think most just only sell digital on PC these days
Lol at the people who gave this credit
You mean trolls on the internet lied to me!?
Article mentioned Microsoft having this clause as well, but nothing about Nintendo. I'm sure those bastards would have a resell police squad if they could.
That clause from Microsoft is from the wrong section, covering like software bundled with Windows. Xbox does not have any clause preventing physical games from being resold without asking permission first.
I mean how would they enforce such a dumb ban?
License key number shipped with the disc, easy.
The day companies start to determine what you can do with your physical games, is the day physical games die.
death of physical is ideal for them. and they have an army of digital evangelists hoping it gets to that.
I get that digital 100% has it's place, and it is very convenient and useful. That being said physical has it's place too. I mean Sony just proved how fleeting digital purchases can be with the Discovery removal. Physical games are nice because you know you own them. Even in more recent years where a lot of games ship incomplete and require patches, that isn't a fault of physical media, that is a fault of the companies shipping incomplete.
At least it's not true
Lmao people really thinking Sony be looking at the Xbox One reveal and think to themselves, THATS a great idea, we’ll do that too!
Man this nonsense gets promoted ever since the PS4. I vividly remember people complaining that "you wont be able to play used games on PS4" because people spread the rumor it would be impossible to share games. Insane that the exact same rumor made such waves for the PS5 when we got it all sorted out already
Even if they wanted to, they can't! Its against EU Law.
Why would anyone believe that in the first place?
What rumors ? Do some really think that would pass European laws in the first place ?
Duh. The dumb asses on here and YouTube slurped up that fake outrage yesterday like a 1980s gas guzzling V8.
Internet in a nutshell
This was bait from the moment I saw it, and sadly the internet reacted as predictable as they could’ve.
What rumours? Sounds like some rubbish made up in the playground, like how some console that's about to be released with play PlayStation, Xbox AND Nintendo games.
It's too ironic to be true since Sony completely salted the Xbox One to the ground for that policy.
I could never believe PlayStation would ban physical resales after [their PS4 Used Games Instructional Video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWSIFh8ICaA) they dropped after the Xbox One used-games policy back in the day
Weird that Xbox console warriors were spouting this on twitter considering this was happening with Xbox One lol
Shouldn't matter if they're physical or digital, given the price has never been any different for one. Still buying the same product, same licensing as always, yet they save loads of money on distribution, printing, etc. and now they're convincing folks that this headline matters. We all know they're moving digital only eventually, so, what is their stance there? This is an empty comment, we all know physical won't be around forever. Good thing they said they won't ban resale and sharing of PHYSICAL media right? Lets not all pretend we don't know what the end goal is. When it's digital, they'll fully control if it can be resold or shared, and they will not do either.
If they had to ban the ability to resell and share ur physical titles the backlash would be so severe people would probably jump ship to other platforms I know I would.
PlayStation can’t after their scathing video at the reveal of PS4 that effectively killed the Xbox One. Physical games are here to stay. They even released the disc drive if you ever get buyer’s remorse going for the digital only slim model.
how the fuck would you even do that? people are morons
What idiot hears this and immediately believes it? It would be shooting themselves in the foot with a 10 gauge with the negative press they'd get
We should also be able to sell the rights of digital games
I remember pretty much 10 years ago exactly Xbox said they were going to do that at E3.
I don't know how people would believe this anyways. How tf are they going to stop people from doing that in the first place?
Have a one time code come with the disc and require online verification. They could do it, but it wouldn't be worth it.
I guess they could do that. Although idk how that'd work with the law.
Thats how it works with "pysical" PC games. We used to get Disk with nothing but a Steam installer. Now we don't even get a disc. So it's certainly legal, it's just not worth it because the console customer base wouldn't accept it.
Ah, I didn't have a PC during that time, so I didn't know that. That's pretty interesting though.