Coelacanth said on September 23:
I've seen this argument a few times now and I disagree with it. Why shouldn't you be able to sell that piece of software to someone else and have the serial key (and thus access to the updates) go with it? At that point, it's off your system. And what difference does it make if someone else gets the updates? It's no different than if you kept the game and updated it yourself. I fail to see the logic of that argument about the man hours or the IP assets. This is really the only thing that currently bothers me about Stardock's business model.
I moved this from the original topic as the moderators are clearly tired of that discussion and I expect it will be locked soon.
Coelacanth, the problem with your argument is that the EULA for most software these days specifically prohibits the resale or transfer of the software license by the original purchaser. The rationale for this is that the company distributing the product only makes money on it once: when the original sale is conducted; why should the company subsidize your efforts to make a few bucks back by continuing to support the product for a third party?
Not really. If you had installation issues, they spent money helping you fix them. If you had patching issues, they spent money getting it fixed.
If the new owner has installation issues, they now have to spend money on the same support that you already got. It's not like they're simply transferred, there's a liability. A risk that they re-incur the same expenses with the new owner that they already had with you.
How's that any different than the support the original user might need installing the legal copy on a new system? This "new owners incur expenses that old owners don't" thing doesn't really make sense to me.
Installing issues usually ouccur only once per user.
Also you dont download all the patches more than a few times.
So if the new user has installing issues and downloads all the patches, SD has to pay for additional support.
Also you have another one downloading and using impusle whitout paying aynthing.
Not to mention that nothing stops you from keeping a fully patched copy of the game somewhere.
Reselling of software simply fails for practical reason.
SD could implement a system to transfer license. But i do not see how this could be done cost effective.
And a big difference between software and music cd is that you dont need to make copies of the music to play it and there is no way to make the user to sign an eula. Which means the most users of music cds dont even make copies that they could keep after selling the original one.
Depending on what you're playing it on, yes, you do make copies. Remember, loading something from hard drive to RAM is copying for copyright purposes, so playing music at all on a computer requires copying. So do most mp3 players. I don't know about you, but I have portions of nearly every CD I own ripped onto my computer. So I could easily sell the CD and keep the copy.
Holding a customer's hand through the process of 'support' is something the CUSTOMER may be entitled to.
The person the on-seller sells his copy to is NOT a customer and thus cannot expect support.
Games/software is definitely NOT the first comodity that has non-transferable warranty.
About the only 'reasonable' way the second buyer could garner support would be to have the customer/seller request it as the 'registered purchaser'.
The only alternative to this is to have separate 'costs'.
Buy the game for $10....and be required to purchase updates/patches AND assistance as required.....then it'd matter little exactly who was seeking [and paying for] support....so then and ONLY then no-one loses, not even the software co. ....
If you re-sell a piece of physical property, you can no longer use it. You physically pass it on to another person.
If you re-sell software, guess what - you can keep it on your drive, and you can keep it working. Even if the serial is stripped from your account denying you access to patches, it still won't deny you access from launching the game.
In the case of physical property, the manufacturer is impacted much less because for any one purchase, only one "consumer" at a time has permanent possession of said property. Likewise, for any physical property, things break and the consumers have to go buy new ones. They have to pay to have their cars serviced, houses repaired, replacement parts, so on so forth.
I see this all the time, it's crap.
This is an argument for Stardock to have non-transferable user accounts so that they only provide support to the original purchaser. It is not an argument for resale to be illegal. It is also not an argument for patches to be secured so they don't leak out. Stardock incurs no costs in patching resales if those patches are taken off third party file servers that make money by selling advertising space. Stardock incurs cost only if Stardock directly does something for a specific user.
Because something can be abused, something should be illegal. What in life doesn't that cover? I can murder people with a toaster. A toaster is heavy, I can put it in a sack and bludgeon people to death. I can plug it in and drop it in someone's bath. A toaster can start fires, even trigger explosions. I can disconnect gas lines, put a piece of paper in the toaster and blow up their house. Toasters are lethal in multiple ways, capable of massive destruction with little effort. Compared to the paltry excuses against resale of software, why aren't toasters illegal?
Furthermore, the difference between a chair and a piece of software isn't that you have to pay to fix your chair when you break it. It's that your chair isn't broken when you buy it.
Just because you choose to ignore the fundamental differences between software and other commodities doesn't mean the gibberish you posted has any relevance to the discussion, or any relation to what you quoted.
For one thing, nothing you quoted (or anything I posted in this thread) had any references to the legality of transferring keys and, in fact, discusses why a standardized (as in, formally offered by Stardock) system for transfers is not a fit for Stardock's system.
Overgeneralizations don't help you much either. If you buy a game which does not work and support is unable to get it to work, you are allowed to return it and you'll even get refunded the retail price (so Stardock eats a loss, if you bought it retail). Now, having a bug does not constitute a "broken" game, so that no longer holds.
Perhaps you should read your post again? You specifically said resale should not be allowed. The topic is whether or not resale should be allowed. I said your post doesn't make an argument against resale and indirect support availability, only against transferring accounts so Stardock directly deals with the costs.
The arrogance of the software industry, it's systemic and I can't blame the individual developers but it's still bullshit. Either something is broken, or it isn't. There is no inbetween. If Sins occasionally crashes, it's broken. If it were a car, Stardock would have four chances to fix Sins, if I had more than four problems, the same problem four times, or any combination thereof, I would be entitled to a new, perfectly functioning copy, or a full refund. If an actual car occasionally stopped working, it would cost the car company millions every time it caused a wreck.
The industry has refused to set and abide by standards to keep things simple. They are, in effect, designed to be broken. Instead of solving that, hopefully in the opposite direction Mac took, they decided to write licensing agreements that excuse them from any liability for all the defects they so rarely manage to clean up before sale. Why do you think those caveats are in there, just to look nice? Most companies try to excuse themselves from you being a complete moron and doing something really stupid, like putting your head in the vice or playing your radio in the bathtub. Software companies tend to excuse themselves from everything, and then gift you with whatever quality of support they deem you worthy of.
Oh, but i do get the whole thing -don't worry.
It's just that to me, there's a very thin line between someone *selling* out their copy to another person when that opportunity is lost for SD to receive "new dollars" input from the freshly registered extra copy when anyone would really buy it from them instead of you - or getting it all free from a Pirated copy.
I sure have a knack for exaggeration though, i'll admit.
[e digicons]igichet:[/e]
True. If you have installation issues on a previous computer for a legal copy, you know/remember how it was resolved. If you have again installation issue on a new computer for the same legal copy, there are lots of chances that you will first try what was useful for fixing the previous issues before needing to contact the support.
I don't need to re-read my posts, but you do. There's a big difference between Stardock not allowing transfer of serials (the only limitation they put on re-sale) and all software re-sales being illegal, as you went off trying to create some non-sensical argument about toasters
Why is it that everyone always pulls out something convenient for them and always ignores everything else? This comparison is flawed in many ways. A more valid comparison is between a highway and a PC. A single car depends only on its own parts to work. A game depends on many things to "work" - including other software that the developer has no control over, and other hardware that the developer has no control over. Already, a direct comparison between a car and a game is not possible. Enter the highway. If you're driving on the highway and another car hits you and you crash, does that mean your car was "broken" to begin with because it has a chance of crashing? No, it crashes because something influenced it. Same with games. They run on PCs which have many hardware configurations, many apps and services running at the same time, and much as a single driver on the highway has no control of what other cars do, games have no control over what other software (including Windows) does. The game can run absolutely flawlessly on several developer systems (in essense, using its own parts), but drop it in the middle of a highway (thousands of other PC configurations) and just like driving a car on a highway, crashes become a possibility.
The vast majority of PC game crashes are various driver conflicts, Windows goofs, or weird device conflicts. This doesn't happen with console games, is it because Console developers are somehow more blessed than PC developers? No, it's because they're developing for a system that does ONE thing and one thing only - run their game. And all such systems are the same. If all PC software and hardware becomes standardized (as in, you can only get one "PC" and everyone's PC is the same), you will see this with PC games as well, because it eliminates everything the developers have no control over.
I am in the camp of people that believe software should be just like books. I can let my friend borrow my book and read it, but I can't copy it and give it away or sell it, but I can sell the original to somebody else if I no longer want it. Why shouldn't software be the same way?
The reason has already been told: transfering the game does not bring any profit to the company. There may be this possibility, but it would require changes in the shopping system. You can not transfer the account, because you may have more licences than the game you want to sell. To modify the whole system would cost money. And someone would had to pay for that. The result would be more expensive games for everyone - even if only few people really would use this option.
While this is all true, I would argue that horneraa's scenario actually is currently an accurate model for software. If you give your friend your retail copy of Sins, he can install and play it on his computer. He gets exactly what you got when you bought it (again with the obvious exception of the ability to register and update). By the same token, if you give him your copy of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, he gets to read Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Books are not generally updated or patched, so he won't get to read The Restaurant at the End of the Universe unless you choose to give him your copy of that too.
I believe that there are good arguments for not reselling software but let me take it one step more.
If you like a game, don't you want to reward the company so that they make more games? Reselling a game you liked instead of forcing a new sale distorts the metrics that go into the question of "Do we make more things like X or do we have to close up shop?"
Right, I think what most people forget (in relation to Stardock) is that the only thing they limit is the support. They don't care if you re-sell your disc. And it will work just fine. But they offer support only to the original owner (or whoever first registers, if it's not the original owner, which can happen).
In essense, they're making sure that they are servicing one person per one copy of the game sold - which I do not believe is at all unreasonable, especially considering the various perks of Stardock's system in general.
You guys are all missing the point, the reason we buy games is for an experience, you're not paying for a CD (which is physical.
Must like any other experience, say a vacation or a season pass to a ski mountain, you shouldn't be able to experience all it has to offer, then give it to someone else to experience the same things. The person who is missing out on money and incurring the fact they're basically giving somebody free access to their property is the owner of the experience, in this case, the software company.
When it comes to intelectual property, there is only one owner, and that is the software company, you guys are paying for a season pass of sorts to experience their product.
While I'm not convinced that I disagree with this, it sounds very weird, like Rekal Corporation from "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale" implanting memories of an experience in your brain and claiming ownership of those memories. I understand that you're paying for an experience but I don't think you can rationally equate that to intellectual property; that's like saying that Stardock owns the neural pathways in my brain where I created memories of playing GalCiv2.
Well, technically, in part you are paying for the CD I don't think this argument is entirely accurate, since a game is not a movie in a theater. If you just sat and watched a game play out and paid for that.. maybe. Like warreni, I know what you're trying to say, but I don't think it's a solid basis for this kind of argument. When you buy a DVD movie, you no longer strictly pay for the experience (like you did when you went to a movie theater), you actually pay for the physical disc that allows you to repeat the experience at your convenience, more or less.
Which is why I, for one, never sell games I like (like Gal Civ 2). That doesn't mean I don't like to be able to recover money lost buying a game I didn't like (like, say, Sins). Sins isn't a bad game, but it doesn't fit my tastes and I barely got any play out of it. I'd like to be able to recover that $50 (Collector's Edition, sigh) by passing it along to someone that would actually enjoy and play the game rather than leaving it to collect dust on a shelf. My experience losing that $50 has directly resulted in my exhibiting MUCH greater caution buying Stardock games, due to non-transferrability. I decided against preordering (or ultimately purchasing at all) Political Machine 2008 as a direct result of that, I decided it wasn't worth the risk. Not-MOM and Gal Civ 3, both of which I'd have pre-ordered for the beta, are going to have to wait for extensive positive reviews and a demo release to get my money now.
I may be unusual, I don't claim to know, but in my case a lack of software transferrability costs a publisher money. It's clear enough, however, that publishers have a legal right to make their products non-transferrable, so it's entirely up to them to determine what model best suits their business needs.
This applies to any good. If I buy a used car, Ford gets no money from me. See the problem? The software industry thinks it's special. Every industry on earth would jump at the chance to stop second hand sales of their goods. Only the software industry actually has the gall to prevent them. You can give yourself any excuse you want, but there is no justification that is unique to software.
Before someone starts pissing and moaning about how a used car isn't the same as a new one, if I drive a car for a month and then sell it, the damned thing is just as good as new unless I fucked it up. Cars last a very long time with proper maintenance. Your software will be incompatible with modern software and hardware long before the car needs an engine overhaul. How many fifteen year old programs can you use today without assistance or modification? Getting fifteen years out of a car is just a matter of changing the oil, replacing brake pads and other parts designed to wear, keeping it clean, and not buying one that's a piece of shit to start with. This with the understanding that cars have a relatively short lifespan, a good kitchen table will outlive your grandchildren if it's taken care of at all. Many things are vastly superior in durability and long term use than software.
Annatar, either your reading comprehension sucks, or you like to argue and are ignoring it for that purpose. Conflicts are a result of insufficient standardization and BUGS, not an unavoidable reality that can't be changed. Read up on hardware vendors some time. Even the standards that exist are routinely ignored by many of them. Individual chipsets are shortchanged by vendors and the substitutions made result in aberant behavior. Even something as obvious as directx compliance for a video card gets fudged on many of the bargain cards. There is endless bitching by both hardware and software designers on the idiocy that abounds. If standards were created and held to by all, there would be no conflicts that weren't a product of a design flaw. Testing a program on a thousand systems to make sure it works on all of them is only required because they aren't.
When I explicitly state the reason for something, either refute it or agree with it, don't pull a console out of your ass.
How about adding a second hand option to the game?
For example, you get tired of the game and give/sell
it to another person. So the new owner has the game, but not
the updates or the customer service. So why not add in
an option where if this second hand buyer can get those
aspects of the game if he pays around $1-$5 extra.
Just have a webpage (or even via impulse) where he
must insert the games old cd key, insert his cc# and
$5 later, he has all the games updates and customer service.
The old account however will get suspended.
This would make the game more fluid/flexible and would allow the
the game to exist longer then without this option, while also
being a self-advertisement. And at the same time, stardock
gets a little money.
I think its a good idea, because stardock gets the
$40 from the origional sale, and $5 extra for every
time the game changes hands. While the origional
buyers don't feel hampered or restricted form selling
or giving away the game.
Just an idea (sorry if this was stated before).
That is such an inherently self-contradictory statement, one clearly made by a consumer, not a producer. Of course, it's about 'how much money the producer of the product can make' but just how does the producer do that without consumers? That is the essential challenge for any business producing a product for sale - balancing consumer satisfaction against price to arrive at what the market will bear.
Who gives a crap about the company? I'm worried about the rights of consumers. In reference to downloadable games, that is a totally different arguement. In that regard I agree with you, but if I buy a physical copy of a game, then I should be able to do with it like I would a book.
Game = Good. Vacation Pass = Service. Goods and services are two different things and are treated differently under the law. If you are saying every time I play a game I am enjoying a service provided to me by a game developer, then I have just lost a little more faith in humanity.
Software companies write games just like authors write books. They are entitled to all the rights given in copyright law, but they are not entitled to control what I choose to do with my copy of the game after I have purchased it. That is the real issue here: somebody is telling me what I can and cannot do with my property. Suddenly I am "renting" the game, not owning. There is something horribly wrong with that.
Technically, you are licensing the game, not owning it. If this is news to you, that's your problem.
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