-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
Is PSN game sharing hurting Sony and PS3 developers?
- Thread starter Deft Beck
- Start date
Neuromancer
Member
If it's piracy, then it's piracy that Sony explicitly advertised as a feature of the console.Hitokage said:
http://www.wired.com/gaming/gamingreviews/news/2006/10/71982Wired article circa 2006 said:
That's such hyperbole.
PSN Gamesharing means one account can be at most shared to 5 PS3s.
Notice: This is one account. This isn't per game. It means, I can share all my games with 4 people I know.
Now go to your favorite torrent site and check how they start with one seeder and with how many leechers/seeders they end up with.
Now that might be technically illegal. But it is nowhere near the same situation, as any judge would establish in a court case. The supposed incurred damage is in a completely different ballpark.
PSN Gamesharing means one account can be at most shared to 5 PS3s.
Notice: This is one account. This isn't per game. It means, I can share all my games with 4 people I know.
Now go to your favorite torrent site and check how they start with one seeder and with how many leechers/seeders they end up with.
Now that might be technically illegal. But it is nowhere near the same situation, as any judge would establish in a court case. The supposed incurred damage is in a completely different ballpark.
My googling abbilities are gimped today... maybe someone with a gold account could use the forum search to find the thread where a dev posted that he was not certain that game sharing was detrimental to dev's revenue? 
But just to add another point to this discussion, I believe that each dev can choose to lock his game to one system for 24 hours? So if one thinks that game sharing will hurt his revenue they can choose to use a different more draconian drm system. They have the choice.
But just to add another point to this discussion, I believe that each dev can choose to lock his game to one system for 24 hours? So if one thinks that game sharing will hurt his revenue they can choose to use a different more draconian drm system. They have the choice.
Corto said:My googling abbilities are gimped today... maybe someone with a gold account could use the forum search to find the thread where a dev posted that he was not certain that game sharing was detrimental to dev's revenue?
But just to add another point to this discussion, I believe that each dev can choose to lock his game to one system for 24 hours? So if one thinks that game sharing will hurt his revenue they can choose to use a different more draconian drm system. They have the choice.
Right. But that has also backfired with some refusing to buy draconian DRM games. The Final Fight bundle comes to mind.
SolidusDave
Member
Hitokage said:
The most used PSN DRM says that you pay for the use of a game on up to 5 different PS3 systems at the same time. It does also not restrict the usage to only the license owner but to every account that has access.
AndyD said:
Judging from the number of votes in the PS Store (compared to other titles) a lot of people bought that game though (that's because game sharing is not that common for casuals etc.).
I also think there must be some kind of restriction by Sony because otherwise we would have had a lot more games with that DRM, no?
However, the problem with FF is that it only lets you play it on the buyers account and this is pure bullshit for various reasons. 24h lock DRM is possible w/o that restriction, see Warhawk etc.
Corto said:My googling abbilities are gimped today... maybe someone with a gold account could use the forum search to find the thread where a dev posted that he was not certain that game sharing was detrimental to dev's revenue?
IIRC there were estimations that 10% or so of the users did gameshare a PSN game I forgot which one it was (maybe Mario commented on Shatter?)
Shai-Tan
Banned
The only game sharing I ever did was when my brother came back from Iraq and I didn't let him take his ps3 back so he bought a new one and I set up my account on there and told him he could dl the PSN games I bought. Not sure if he ever bothered to dl the games.
Anyway the people I talk to about this don't seem to have a clue about it. I often hear someone asking me to borrow a disk based game but I've never been asked to share a PSN game.
Anyway the people I talk to about this don't seem to have a clue about it. I often hear someone asking me to borrow a disk based game but I've never been asked to share a PSN game.
yurinka
Member
Something Sony legally allows you to do using their systems, unlike to duplicate disks and sell them or dump games and distribute them in torrent sites or similar.Hitokage said:
Developers are free to use other DRM ways in PS3 if they want to, like the 24 lock (a game activated by a user can't be activated by another in 24h) or to disable the sharing. But if most of them use the normal one is because they don't see any problem.
SolidusDave said:
I agree.
There are various degrees on DRM of course, and FF is one of the most onerous we have seen. But you are right, there is also the 24 hours lock one.
The issue with that one is that it still affects some fair users, those with more than one PS3 in their house. I should be able to play every game on my upstairs and downstairs PS3 anytime (except at the same time maybe). Which is why I think a cloud saving method needs to come out soon.
Neuromancer
Member
Yeah look how quickly they shut their Linux feature down, once it became inconvenient for them.Burai said:
That's assy. They should just be glad you played it, I would think.Amir0x said:
criesofthepast
Member
Don't you think if Sony gave a damn about this that they would enact a better system to stop people from doing this? ie. final fight drm, 24 hour lockout on every single PSN title.
Or you know, actually come out and say something publicly about it. A blog post saying they are 100% against it and anyone caught doing it will be banned would probably suffice. But they haven't. So why does GAF insist on bitching about this more than Sony or developers themselves?
Especially considering only a year ago we had a 2400 post game sharing thread on here.
Or you know, actually come out and say something publicly about it. A blog post saying they are 100% against it and anyone caught doing it will be banned would probably suffice. But they haven't. So why does GAF insist on bitching about this more than Sony or developers themselves?
Especially considering only a year ago we had a 2400 post game sharing thread on here.
duckroll said:
I think it's a bit different when you're talking about bigger companies getting $60 for their games, and smaller possibly indie devs getting far less. Granted, their budgets are also smaller, and there is no way to know if it's proportionate to the cost of a bigger budget title and it's price tag.
Still, I think that this might 'hurt' those smaller devs more than say, Gamefly or borrowing, trading, etc.
PS: I mean 'hurt' as in not a positive. A potential sale is a potential sale, so there's no way for us to measure what could have been, would have been, etc. We can get on semantics until the cows come home, but it'a easier if you look at it like "if x gamer wouldn't have shared it, he was a potential sale".
Amir0x said:
Well, that's obviously your fault for sharing something so amazingly awesome instead of buying it like you should have in the first place
QGames = Win.SolidusDave
Member
Roto13 said:
Yes, you share accounts, not specific games (however, the timer for the 24hour lock DRM is per-game I think).
The only way for a person to distribute a PSN game to more than 4 other people would be to buy it once more with a different account to get a license for 4 more PS3s and so on.
Volcynika said:
I don't get this though! Don't all of their games have demo's? Or am I mistaken?
Maybe it's just difficult for me to understand people getting something for free, then buying it anyway. I'm a pessimist, and I don't believe there are that many good willed people out there :lol
Dreams-Visions
Member
I game-shared one game in life.
Meh.
Meh.
gutter_trash
Banned
game sharing is more limited than people think and plus you must trust the people you are sharing with and that is something that many of us wouldn't do, trust others so much
***
what hurts PSN more than XBLA is the lack of fuckin' Demos/Trials fuck fuck fuck fuck
not dropping money on a random DD game that has no Demo fuck
tried the Demo for Scott Pilgrim, liked it bought it,
tried the Demo for Shank; thought it to have slow response on button presses , did not buy it
***
what hurts PSN more than XBLA is the lack of fuckin' Demos/Trials fuck fuck fuck fuck
not dropping money on a random DD game that has no Demo fuck
tried the Demo for Scott Pilgrim, liked it bought it,
tried the Demo for Shank; thought it to have slow response on button presses , did not buy it
charlequin
Banned
There's a couple questions here.
One, is there anything wrong with game sharing? I say unequivocally no. These are the license terms PSN games are sold under. They permit use on five systems and don't place even unenforceable restrictions on which systems those may be. This is the equivalent of using the spawn feature from Starcraft or something -- yes, it can create situations where someone doesn't need to buy a game they otherwise might have, but it does so when people use a built-in feature in a way that was, if not intended, at least anticipated. End users should never feel compelled to watch out for the publishers' interests in this kind of scenario; pay full price if you want, to support the developer (or get five installs all to yourself) but not because you think sharing is inherently wrong.
The second is whether desigining their system this way has increased or decreased sales overall. This one's pretty hard to figure out since we don't even know what PSN sales in general look like, though the little information we have suggests that only a small portion of PSN titles purchased are being shared in the first place. At that point you just have the question of whether the network-advertising effect (where people go spend more money on things related to stuff they liked when they got it for free) outdoes the cheapskate effect. My own guess is that they'd probably more or less even out, but we'd need much more detailed numbers to even start to get a factual answer.
It is, at least, pretty clear that a) devs can have very successful releases on PSN and b) Sony has made no serious effort to rework their game sharing policy, so I certainly don't think there's much chance this is some sort of epidemic destroying the platform from inside.
One, is there anything wrong with game sharing? I say unequivocally no. These are the license terms PSN games are sold under. They permit use on five systems and don't place even unenforceable restrictions on which systems those may be. This is the equivalent of using the spawn feature from Starcraft or something -- yes, it can create situations where someone doesn't need to buy a game they otherwise might have, but it does so when people use a built-in feature in a way that was, if not intended, at least anticipated. End users should never feel compelled to watch out for the publishers' interests in this kind of scenario; pay full price if you want, to support the developer (or get five installs all to yourself) but not because you think sharing is inherently wrong.
The second is whether desigining their system this way has increased or decreased sales overall. This one's pretty hard to figure out since we don't even know what PSN sales in general look like, though the little information we have suggests that only a small portion of PSN titles purchased are being shared in the first place. At that point you just have the question of whether the network-advertising effect (where people go spend more money on things related to stuff they liked when they got it for free) outdoes the cheapskate effect. My own guess is that they'd probably more or less even out, but we'd need much more detailed numbers to even start to get a factual answer.
It is, at least, pretty clear that a) devs can have very successful releases on PSN and b) Sony has made no serious effort to rework their game sharing policy, so I certainly don't think there's much chance this is some sort of epidemic destroying the platform from inside.
charlequin
Banned
MrPliskin said:
There is a difference, but in practice the way that difference usually plays out is that indie/small-scale artists on the whole benefit much more from additional promotion (which distributing their content for cheap or free can help them get) than they even have the possibility of suffering from "lost sales" (since their sales are so low to start with.)
SolidusDave
Member
Speevy said:
uhm, 80% game-shared would be the theoretical maximum (1 persons buys it, 4 people share it) and that's already out of question for any game.
@20%: Is that data from leaderboards vs. actual sales? Because if multiple persons use the same PS3, they might use separate accounts (I hope people don't consider that gamesharing as well?).
Maybe you can enhance the data buy excluding accounts that only played the game for a very short time? (though I have a buddy who bought 15 PSN games only to play them once :lol )
That's exactly why I want to know how they determine who is genuine and who isn't. Because there are so many ways to screw it up and without knowing how they classify the different groups it's just a very unreliable number.SolidusDave said:
You can however push the false positive number quite low, depending on what information they phone home and how much time they invest into the analysis.
MrPliskin said:Well, that's obviously your fault for sharing something so amazingly awesome instead of buying it like you should have in the first place
They were ok games, nothing great... but after the Pixeljunk developers decided to be all dumb on me, I just decided not to give them any of my money. That seems to be a fair exchange. I have a friend who allows me to share games, and he has all the Pixeljunk titles, so that's about as much as I will go as far as Q games goes.
Malvolio said:
I've purchased several games that were gameshared to me too that I liked. That's the way I am. If one of the people I'm gamesharing with decides they need to cancel the account or something, I won't be able to use their games anymore, so it's for my own security.
But don't get angry at me for utilizing a feature that some of Sony's own representatives have told me it's the reason it was there for, just because you don't like it. If you don't like the feature then maybe you should be making games for XBLA or WiiWare.
Similar threads
- Locked