Microsoft reverses controversial game licensing policies • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft reverses controversial game licensing policies

#101

Post by jlgreco » Wed, Jun 19, 2013, 11:41 PM UTC

georgemcbay wrote: post #100

jlgreco wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would have the problem of not allowing you to sell your games if your console was broken or stolen.

Not necessarily, there's already a web component to Xbox Live at xbox.com that you can login to from any browser and you can even do things on it (today) like reset all your Xbox 360 digital content licenses (I think this is limited to once per year) for exactly this sort of situation where your console died and you had to buy a new one. So, log in to xbox.com, see list of your active licenses, click 'deactive' link…

If your console allows you to play disc purchased games without the disc in the console, then being able to "deactivate" the disc on the web before reselling it would allow you to continue to play your game on your un-networked console.

You can't have disc-less disc games that allow trading and don't require some form of "always on". You have to give up one of those; this time around it seems they are giving up "disc-less disc".

Re: Microsoft reverses controversial game licensing policies

#102

Post by jstevens85 » Wed, Jun 19, 2013, 11:48 PM UTC

InclinedPlane wrote: post #83

sivam wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Just put a code into the game case that allows for discless play, and require an online connection to install the game to the hd and unlock it for discless play. Not rocket science It is rocket science apparently Person A does what you said and goes on a cruise ship playing the game before giving the disc to Person B. Person B takes his disc, installs the game with an online connection. The server has no way of tell…

Maybe you missed the point entirely. Person A installs the game. Then goes on a cruise ship, playing the installed game, giving the disc to Person B. Person B takes the disc and can't install it because the code that came with the game has already been used. If he or she wants to play it without the disc then they need to buy a new code. Person B plays the game as much as they want then lends the game to Person C. Pe…

Except that publishers won't agree to such a deal, meaning that any console implementing such a policy would lose third-party support resulting in significantly decreased sales units, and ultimately billion dollar loses for the console manufacturer.

Re: Microsoft reverses controversial game licensing policies

#103

Post by thwest » Wed, Jun 19, 2013, 11:51 PM UTC

magic_haze wrote: post #96

nivla wrote: post #31

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

Very simple. Keep the 24 hour restrictions as-is, but allow transition to an offline mode after notifying the mothership. This disallows all the family sharing features. Games installed using a physical disk would require the disk to be present, downloaded games are unaffected (since you can't sell them without connecting to xbox live.) This takes care of the submarine scenario. When you're back online, check for the…

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

Re: Microsoft reverses controversial game licensing policies

#104

Post by magic_haze » Wed, Jun 19, 2013, 11:56 PM UTC

thwest wrote: post #103

magic_haze wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very simple. Keep the 24 hour restrictions as-is, but allow transition to an offline mode after notifying the mothership. This disallows all the family sharing features. Games installed using a physical disk would require the disk to be present, downloaded games are unaffected (since you can't sell them without connecting to xbox live.) This takes care of the submarine scenario. When you're back online, check for the…

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

They could market it as a "360 mode"... it's exactly the features currently available in the xbox 360, nothing more.

Re: Microsoft reverses controversial game licensing policies

#105

Post by kytmizuno » Thu, Jun 20, 2013, 12:04 AM UTC

InclinedPlane wrote: post #83

sivam wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Just put a code into the game case that allows for discless play, and require an online connection to install the game to the hd and unlock it for discless play. Not rocket science It is rocket science apparently Person A does what you said and goes on a cruise ship playing the game before giving the disc to Person B. Person B takes his disc, installs the game with an online connection. The server has no way of tell…

Maybe you missed the point entirely. Person A installs the game. Then goes on a cruise ship, playing the installed game, giving the disc to Person B. Person B takes the disc and can't install it because the code that came with the game has already been used. If he or she wants to play it without the disc then they need to buy a new code. Person B plays the game as much as they want then lends the game to Person C. Pe…

But now you have Person A and Person B playing the game at the same time with only 1 purchase of the game.

Re: Microsoft reverses controversial game licensing policies

#106

Post by nivla » Thu, Jun 20, 2013, 12:20 AM UTC

magic_haze wrote: post #96

nivla wrote: post #31

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

Very simple. Keep the 24 hour restrictions as-is, but allow transition to an offline mode after notifying the mothership. This disallows all the family sharing features. Games installed using a physical disk would require the disk to be present, downloaded games are unaffected (since you can't sell them without connecting to xbox live.) This takes care of the submarine scenario. When you're back online, check for the…

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

Re: Microsoft reverses controversial game licensing policies

#107

Post by lotso » Thu, Jun 20, 2013, 12:22 AM UTC

bornhuetter wrote: post #80

bskap wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original plan let you designate 10 accounts that could play any of your games (although only one account plus the main could play a game at once- no buying one copy of Halo and then having all 11 of you get online at once). The check-in is required in order to remove old games from your account, not to add new games. It's to make sure you still have the license to the game that you're playing. That's far more gen…

So what is the point of the once per day online requirement? And what is the point of restricting used games? There are no technical reasons for these (as I have explained in other posts), and so people are justifiably were livid.

The once per day is to ensure you still have legitimate access to the game.

The point of restricting used games is that all games are treated as digital downloads, whether they are delivered over the internet or through a disc install.

Re: Microsoft reverses controversial game licensing policies

#108

Post by mikelat » Thu, Jun 20, 2013, 12:33 AM UTC

nivla wrote: post #31

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

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

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

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

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

Re: Microsoft reverses controversial game licensing policies

#109

Post by magic_haze » Thu, Jun 20, 2013, 12:39 AM UTC

nivla wrote: post #106

magic_haze wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very simple. Keep the 24 hour restrictions as-is, but allow transition to an offline mode after notifying the mothership. This disallows all the family sharing features. Games installed using a physical disk would require the disk to be present, downloaded games are unaffected (since you can't sell them without connecting to xbox live.) This takes care of the submarine scenario. When you're back online, check for the…

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

hmm, I wasn't aware you could sell your physical disks on the xbox store... that just seems like a recipe for disaster. It seems like such a corner case, though, that I think they could get away with only allowing downloaded games to be resold online. Physical disks would have to be resold through Gamestop or similar, which would actually act as an incentive to purchase the digital version!

Re: Microsoft reverses controversial game licensing policies

#110

Post by interpol_p » Thu, Jun 20, 2013, 12:59 AM UTC

nivla wrote: post #31

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

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

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

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

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