Mortal Kombat

[Anthony]

Gamestop sucks. Money leaving them is good. It is money leaving the hands of game developers. I would rather cheaper games with no resale than more expensive games with resale. Fuck a middleman taking part of the pie.

[Hero]

You guys really buy that many used games?

Not really, but I think it's more "the prinicple of the matter" and all that. Restrictive DRM only harms the consumer (as pirates get around it thus getting a better copy of the game). So practices like this that are supposingly sticking it to The Man (ironically by a bigger The Man) will only hurt the consumer in the long run. It creates a new normal where consumers are content with paying more, owning less, a combination of these things, and/or having their protection against crappiness (selling lousy games back) eroded.

The other hint that we're going this direction is how quickly Project Ten Dollar is being adopted by other publishers. Another step in that direction is how the Project was first pitched as a value-added thing that wouldn't impede on core gameplay or features (Cerberus) and how it's now required to get to core gameplay components (online play). So while it doesn't hurt a new-buyer's wallet directly or right now, I worry about where it could go.

[Hero]

It's more of a principled stance. It's our right to sell the whole game, not just most of it with one part of it missing. That's like selling your used DVD but you only get the ending if you give the studio an extra $5 for it. What they're doing is legally ambiguous and I hope someone takes these companies to court over it.

What he said.

[Cheebs]

Guys, there is nothing legally ambiguous about it. You have never owned the game/album/movie/software. Since the first 8-bit cartridge crawled out of the primordial ooze, you have owned a license to play the game. The dev owned the game. They can do whatever the hell they want with it. With piracy running rampant, you better hope they keep dreaming up stuff like this unless you want nothing but freeware devs.

[Chux]

That's fair and all, but the games that I've bought that had it, I bought D1 or new. NFS did it, ME2 did it, MK is going to do it.

Hell if you guys are going to wait til it gets a price drop, even if you buy it new, it's still free online.

I don't like it, but I'm not going not enjoy a game solely on it. Blows if you're renting it though.

[Hero]

you better hope they keep dreaming up stuff like this unless you want nothing but freeware devs.

It's not all one way or another - and publishers bank on such advocates claiming so in order to justify their actions.

Also, can you imagine what a pain in the ass it will be for a legitimate owner to try to lend this out to a friend to show how cool it is, or bring it to a friend's and then play online? I don't see how any of that constitutes as Gamestop's benefit, pro-piracy, stealing from publishers via used sales, etc etc.

[Chux]

If I'm bringing it to a friends, I'm bringing my profile, problem solved.

As for the renting/borrowing, yeah that sucks.

[Razor Ramon]

Guys, there is nothing legally ambiguous about it. You have never owned the game/album/movie/software. Since the first 8-bit cartridge crawled out of the primordial ooze, you have owned a license to play the game. The dev owned the game. They can do whatever the hell they want with it. With piracy running rampant, you better hope they keep dreaming up stuff like this unless you want nothing but freeware devs.

You know nothing about consumer law and it shows in this very post.

[Cheebs]

You know nothing about consumer law and it shows in this very post.

Oh damn! No you didn't! Attacking my ability to appear to know about consumer law on a video game message board... It's on.

Yo 2nd cousin is so transparent about her lack of consumer law knowledge when posting on a video game message board, she told everybody in the Ikaruga thread that you could sue Treasure if you got fat from eating too many bullets!

[Josh]

mom snaps are now a bannable offense, noob.