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You mean if every gamer just gave the disc to a friend to play? People do that all the time. It’s fine because it doesn’t scale as large as GameStop. Let’s con

You mean if every gamer just gave the disc to a friend to play? People do that all the time. It’s fine because it doesn’t scale as large as GameStop. Let’s consider digital sales. Many people would like “used” sales of digital goods. (Is it really used if you make a new copy from the same, or possibly different, source bits?) Imagine if digital licenses could be transferred instantly, for free, and infinitely. In such a world there would be a new middleman. Let’s call it WoodStop. In this world WoodStop would offer a launcher. When you want to play a game it would acquire a license and launch the game. When you stop playing it releases the license. In this world the total number of licenses that EVER need to be sold is the peak concurrent user number. After launch week no new copies of the game ever need to be sold! In fact most games could probably sell 10% of their launch week sales and no player would ever have to wait to launch their game. This system obviously does not work. Not with the initial licenses being sold for $60 at least. Digital goods are _weird_. They cost upwards of $100,000,000 to create but cost less than a penny to download. And yet everyone on this HackerNews website earns a very good living producing work that can be infinitely reproduced for effectively free.

Dylan16807 6y ago
Not giving, but selling for maybe $20 average. Which scales just fine, ebay is full of games. > Imagine if digital licenses could be transferred instantly, for free, and infinitely. Sure, instant rental would break some things. But this isn't very far from the Netflix (DVD) or library model. If libraries stocked up on video game discs, would you be upset by that? Is everything fine if you have to wait two days between transfers of a copy?
- forrestthewoods 6y ago
  There aren’t many physical releases for short games anymore. Any game in the 2 to 8 range probably costs $15 to $30 and is digital only. Physical releases are largely reserved for full priced titles where the overheard of manufacturing, distribution, and middle-man cut make it still worth while. eBay has plenty of games if you want them. But as a percentage of the industry it’s not a big deal. GameStop is unique in that it was one of the top sellers of games AND their business was predicated on selling recent games as used. The incentives are perverse. Honestly I think digital solves pricing relatively well. Everyone knows a brand new $60 game will be $30 in a few months and $20 in a year. Anyone can buy in at the price they deem appropriate. For PC if there’s a DRM-free version either at launch or after a year there’s no major concern about a game disappearing from the world. There’s a lot of ways you can drawn the line. But they’re all arbitrary and based on what you want to min/max rather than natural or obvious laws. Digital is weird because we make copies every time we install! Even game discs make a full copy on HDD. Afterwards the only thing a disc does is provide DRM. The game is fully installed and played from a copy on the HDD! (Because reading data from a DVD is slow as shit). And modern games have so many patches the content on a disc is worthless. The disc literally provides no value except DRM. FWIW I would also change copyright law such that it doesn’t last 50+ years. More content should become public domain far faster. You can dig into my comment history for some recent discussion about that. I’d like to think I’m pro-consumer and pro-creator. There is a tension there. Tricky balance. But I’m anti-middle men. Especially those who have a moat and use it to extract value while providing little to nothing in return.

Dylan16807 6y ago

Not giving, but selling for maybe $20 average. Which scales just fine, ebay is full of games. > Imagine if digital licenses could be transferred instantly, for free, and infinitely. Sure, instant rental would break some things. But this isn't very far from the Netflix (DVD) or library model. If libraries stocked up on video game discs, would you be upset by that? Is everything fine if you have to wait two days between transfers of a copy?

forrestthewoods 6y ago
There aren’t many physical releases for short games anymore. Any game in the 2 to 8 range probably costs $15 to $30 and is digital only. Physical releases are largely reserved for full priced titles where the overheard of manufacturing, distribution, and middle-man cut make it still worth while. eBay has plenty of games if you want them. But as a percentage of the industry it’s not a big deal. GameStop is unique in that it was one of the top sellers of games AND their business was predicated on selling recent games as used. The incentives are perverse. Honestly I think digital solves pricing relatively well. Everyone knows a brand new $60 game will be $30 in a few months and $20 in a year. Anyone can buy in at the price they deem appropriate. For PC if there’s a DRM-free version either at launch or after a year there’s no major concern about a game disappearing from the world. There’s a lot of ways you can drawn the line. But they’re all arbitrary and based on what you want to min/max rather than natural or obvious laws. Digital is weird because we make copies every time we install! Even game discs make a full copy on HDD. Afterwards the only thing a disc does is provide DRM. The game is fully installed and played from a copy on the HDD! (Because reading data from a DVD is slow as shit). And modern games have so many patches the content on a disc is worthless. The disc literally provides no value except DRM. FWIW I would also change copyright law such that it doesn’t last 50+ years. More content should become public domain far faster. You can dig into my comment history for some recent discussion about that. I’d like to think I’m pro-consumer and pro-creator. There is a tension there. Tricky balance. But I’m anti-middle men. Especially those who have a moat and use it to extract value while providing little to nothing in return.