4 ms·
Can Blu-Rays be manufactured to make each disc unique, with an embedded code that is used to link a license of the game to an account? Then the publisher could
by beerlord 8y ago
Can Blu-Rays be manufactured to make each disc unique, with an embedded code that is used to link a license of the game to an account?
Then the publisher could simply decide to disallow games from being activated on another account.
Or, bundle a CDKey inside the case, but I think this exposes significant fraud risk if a rogue employee cracks open hundreds of cases from a shipment, sells the keys online, then reseals them.
- morganvachon 8y agoCombine your first idea with your second and you may be on to something. A uniquely encoded disc that must pair with the printed CD key in the case. Kind of a public/private key thing, I guess? Crypto isn't my area of expertise so I have no idea if that is feasible.
- dfox 8y agoThis is how some 90's CD copy protection systems worked. The CD-key was essentially hash of encoding defects on that particular CD.
- morganvachon 8y agoWow, and that makes perfect sense too.
- LeoPanthera 8y agoI believe this was how the XBox One was originally going to work, but the outcry was so loud that Microsoft had to backtrack before the console was launched. A particular criticism was that you would not be able to play any games without internet access, which would have made it useless for many people, including for example some military personnel deployed overseas.
- beerlord 8y agoIts just a matter of time before that happens. How many gamers who aren't on a plane, in a train or in a base in Fallujah don't have constant broadband access? I think those instances are being reduced yearly all around the world. The next generation of consoles will have a low-end version that hosts some of the calculations locally, such as input and collision detection, but all of the detailed rendering etc. on the cloud. All games will be inherently 'online only', distribution of optical disks will become pointless and everything will be linked to an account - no resale.
- lovich 8y agoWhy should this be allowed. First sale doctrine wasn't made because it was technically infeasible to enforce controls on reselling. It was made because we decided as a society that once someone sells something to you, they don't have control over it anymore. This push to let every company both eat their cake and have it to, when it comes to selling their products but maintaining control over them, is just turning our society into a sort of serfdom again
- Pica_soO 8y agoOh, the times when the courier was stealing the golden masters- those where the days.
- izacus 8y agoA huge amount of games these days are sold as just CDkeys in a box so all of those pesky physical media concerns fall away. You're blocked from reselling them, they're leaden with DRM and the copyright owners are happy.
- cannonedhamster 8y agoAt least until Steam decides to stop hosting a popular game. Then the outcry will be real and people will decide that they own what they buy law be damned.
- beerlord 8y agoWhich is why Steam would never do that. All they're doing is hosting a few gigabytes of files on their CDN. Why would they ever voluntarily remove a game unless it had broken some kind of law? Even games that were removed from Steam like Hatred could still be downloaded by people who had already bought it. I think you overestimate how much people are interested in their old games. People just want to move on to the latest and greatest hit.
- genericid 8y ago> Why would they ever voluntarily remove a game unless it had broken some kind of law? Because they're bankrupt. Which they will eventually be, the only question is when.