It’s no secret that the aftermarket trade of video games is a thriving business, and that developers and publishers never see a penny of it. David Braben (developer, Frontier Games) has finally voiced the fear. Citing the short shelf life of new games and the small footprint that new games are given in retail Braben has discovered a solution: ban used games.
The nuts and bolts of the ban boils down to copy protection–some sort of code on the disc or package from the developer–but it’s not difficult to imagine a server activation more along the lines of modern DRM. In fact, games like Mario Kart DS already match a console to a cartridge to create a unique identifier for the player’s online presence. So, even if these program features haven’t been applied to copy protection, the technology is already in place.
It gets trickier and trickier to play the games you buy every year.
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Tags: Frontier Games · GameStop · IGN · used games3 Comments
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3 responses so far ↓
Bah, Doctrine of First Sale, who needs it?
Yeah, developers and publishers would have a stronger position with computer games (since you don’t so much buy the game as the license to use it), but I don’t think there are any such EULAs for console games.
[...] readers may recall that we reported on David Braben’s declaration of war against the used-games market. In case it’s just too hard to click the link, the short [...]