actually secondhand sales do quite a bit to change this, as you get people who would otherwise be buying new and contributing to maintaining the longevity of a servers cost just recycling the same copies over and overcollige wrote:Except that almost every single multiplayer game either has dedicated servers paid for by the community (like Battlefield 3) or just has client to client connections that don't rely on having a server at all (like CoD). Looking at the list of games who do this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_pass), I can't see a single one that actually has servers hosting the games, so that point is kind of moot.deadly habit wrote:your other mediums don't rely on dedicated server costs for multiplayer, it's why entire online communities have died off once a new version of a game comes out. are you willing to pay a premium to pay multiplayer a la xbox live? sure you have the right to do whatever the fuck you want with your physical copy as far as local singleplayer and multiplayer, but since you're generally relying on a 3rd party to host your multiplayer game, why should used players get access without contributing to the companies who host these servers?collige wrote:No they shouldn't. Why should they? Why should they get special treatment for consumers that exists literally in no other industry, artistic or otherwise? It's the equivalent of saying that labels should get a cut of everything sold on Discogs. If I buy a physical good, I should be able to do whatever the fuck I want with it and sell it to whoever the fuck I want. Copyright law agrees with this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_of_first_saledeadly habit wrote: It's about time that the devs and publishers get a chunk of the used game market.
your argument of it being like any other entertainment industry doesn't hold much weight, because gaming isn't like any other entertainment industry.
also if you look at the fine print in most instruction manuals, you're essentially renting access to play the game at the companies discretion. it's why people can be banned permanently for hacks and exploits.
Secondly, we can assume that the cost of hosting multiplayer games for one person is covered by them buying the game new once right? In that case, once the game has been sold off to another consumer who may or may not play the game online, there's no more cost to the host than if the original player had kept the game to play. There's no additional cost to the hosting service once the game has been sold because the old owner can't play the game online. Every copy has to be bought new once and the number of concurrent online players is limited by the number of new discs that were bought. Secondhand sales do nothing to change this.
also it's worth noting that the games without dedicated servers tend to be a gimped service which limits the number of people who can play and is less than ideal, although some companies allow you to host your own servers, there are still dedicated servers ran by the companies, you may not play on them, but people do, otherwise there would be no servers available at game launches.
