Blessed by the Potato

Penny Arcade drew attention to the fighting words of one game developer, who will explicitly not support used games from joining in multiplayer mode.

Controversy ensues.

Myself, I’m more than a little torn on the issue. On the one hand, I naturally rebel against a company trying to lock down content that I’m going to pay for (not that that’s a concern with this specific case of a wrestling game). Being able to own something and resell it has been a long-standing property right, whether it’s a car, air conditioner*, book, or video game. Who is this greedy corporation to arbitrarily decide to degrade the product/service you paid for, just because you sold it on to someone else? Indeed, if it wasn’t for Blizzard making StarCraft2 impossible to transfer to a new account, my SC2 woes would have been solved in a trivial way. Heck, even if you twist it so that instead of “buying” a game, you “license” or “lease” one, in the real world even licensees and leasees can often assign or sublet.

On the other hand, I do want to support the ability of people to come together to trade money for stuff in ways that work for them. And digital delivery is going to may require a different playbook than we’re familiar with from physical media.

Where I get caught up though, is when companies try to charge the same for less. If I can ordinarily share my games with friends when I’m done with them, or sell them used for $10, then this crippled version of the game should cost less up front because it is in fact an inferior product. Likewise with ebooks: there’s no reason in my mind for them to cost nearly as much as a paperback, and that’s from my point of view of receiving value, not even taking into account their lowered distribution/publishing costs side of things. So when these companies say that they don’t care about used buyers because they don’t (directly) see any of the money from the used transaction, I have to step up and say that they did get money from the used buyer, and they got it up front: the first buyer paid $50 for their own use of the game, and another $10 that they hope to get from the used buyer down the road.

* – incidentally, I’m still trying to sell my wall/slot air conditioner. If you’re London and want a used air conditioner for a wall slot (typically found in highrise apartments) send me an email!