For this to matter you'd have to have a Supreme Court that gives a damn about that. 6-3 conservative majority says they can give 0 fucks about anything if it owns the libs.
I don't think anybody here is going to argue that what he did was a crime. Not seriously anyway. His other crimes aside, it's indisputable that he ran the Silk Road operation; and it was an operation. It isn't like he was your dealer down the street either. Given the scale of it, it's easier to compare it to a store or distribution center and I can see the penalties for that causing the sentencing to be ratcheted up.
His conviction is little more than a hollow victory given the serious issues surrounding the investigation and litigation of Ulbricht. I'm sure he can appeal this and have a good chance of sticking it to them. Which is a serious problem because he's guilty and everybody knows he's guilty--I don't disagree with the notion that he ought to be behind bars for it. With all of the issues surrounding the case, no matter how damning the evidence, it's credible that he can get off on a technicality and that's a problem.
The sentencing is incredible, and I'm sure it was set more to make an example out of him than anything. It looks steep because it's meant to look steep. Whether or not the Silk Road itself should have been taken down or exploited by the police is up for debate--I think more good could have been done by leaving it intact with discrete handling, but it's not a hard argument to make that such a thing likely wouldn't be able to last very long.
That would be a good strategy except the good folks behind TOR have absolutely no reason for noncompliance. CISPA doesn't DISCOURAGE the freeflow of information between parties in any meaningful way (if it does so at all).
What's the point of a "democracy" if the very system put in place to serve the public can ignore the public's dissent toward any law that it wants to pass. Forget reform. All branches of the government have sidestepped the single most valuable asset the public has against it: Fear. A government should fear its people. Ours, quite clearly, does not. As it systematically vandalizes or outright ignores the very checks and balances put in place against it. And we let it happen.
You're right about the added risk to a secondhand market. It's a part of the business I didn't consider much. But even assuming that risk overhead is covered by the sales themselves, it is hard to argue that Gamestop isn't competing with developers when it pops used titles back on the shelf mere hours (yes, I have seen hours) or days after a title hits the streets.
This isn't a big problem in other markets, where overhead isn't nearly as high. But the overhead in game development in particular is extraordinarily high. And it goes up with each successive generation.
But by dropping the price quicker, you have to sell more copies of the title to cover development overhead and eventually turn a profit. That part isn't guaranteed whether you drop the price or not and that's true for both markets. And you can expect Gamestop to undercut the new price as well. What you'd wind up with is seeing the two markets bleed themselves dry as they try to compete with one another for dominance while the consumer waited until the price couldn't go any lower before they bought it.
Sure. You go right ahead, open up that big, imaginary wallet of yours, and establish a brand new business to compete--directly I might add--in a well-established market against an well-established and entrenched business. You take control of a development firm and create that medium. Oh wait. That's suicide.
To make a long story short: No. From a business perspective it makes more sense to rein in control over the market by cutting them off entirely. Or trying to cooperate with the market that's competing with them. The latter is much more preferable in both markets than the former. And is also the solution we're much more likely to see.
Getting back tot he point at hand: Are you insane? You're trying to tell me that it makes more sense to establish a new service in direct competition with an already established and popular service than work with it to increase revenue gains. If it paid off, the gains would be incredible. But that's an incredulous gamble that no sane developer would take.
I'm going to point out that this post applies specifically to console/handheld development and does not address the new advents in the mobile gaming development explicitly because the markets for them and development costs are completely different and non-comparable.
What you point out is, fairly enough, a reasonable portion of the problem. The business model is outdated and the businesses supporting them have yet to upgrade. But upgrading isn't quite so simple in the case of game developers.
This is because game development depends on a variety of factors. All of which can or do severely impact the decisions behind development and I'm going to address some of the ones that I believe are fairly important. I see gamers calling out developers all the time for not developing new IPs--and what they don't realize is just how much of a risk; and how expensive; that has become.
This can be attributed to the large shift in development in terms of multi-platform development. Yes, ten and fifteen years ago we saw multi-platform game development; but that was decidedly less common back then. Same name titles could be--and often were--quite different dependent on the platform because of the engines they were developed on. In truth, this hasn't changed at all from ten and fifteen years ago. What's changed is the way multi-platform games are developed. Back then it was fine for a title across Gameboy, SNES, and Sega Genesis/Mega Drive to be completely different from each other. But now it's become industry standard to homogenize the title(s) as much as possible. This severely complicates development because the hardware limitations of one system have to be taken into consideration when developing for another. This issue becomes most apparent when released titles on one platform suffer from fewer problems than another. For example: The PS3 version of Bayonetta suffered from noticeable framerate drops and screen tearing; it wasn't a deal-breaker, but such problems were nonexistent on the Xbox 360 version. This problem became noticeable in the previous generation, but did not move to the forefront until the current generation of gaming.
It was a natural evolution for the business to want to spread the same title across as many platforms as possible to increase revenue streams and reach target audiences on another platform. As a point of fact, many companies enjoyed relatively substantial growth and success precisely because of it. But that same homogenization has made development more difficult as developers have to compensate for flaws in one system or another. That isn't to say it's the only reason development has become more expensive. In fact, the platforms themselves are another reason development has become more difficult and more expensive.
To be more precise, as the hardware becomes more advanced, the difficulty and cost of development goes up. This is, in part, due to the "console war" of each generation, as the three game giants vie for the top spot and try to distinguish themselves with varying degrees of hardware advancements. The difference in tech on its own makes development harder; but the advancement itself complicates matters further as current techniques in development might not be applicable in the newer generation. It is true that hardware technology is "converging" but this is only in the sense that consoles are becoming more and more like computers with each successive generation (and computers are becoming more and more like general means of entertainment. Hmmm....). The consoles themselves are vastly different from one another in terms of hardware and software. Compare game software to the way computer software on a PC might not be compatible on a MAC and you're pretty close. The console hardware may be converging, but the console software is not. Which goes back to the multi-platform problem.
So, difficulty and cost of development have increased. What about time? Well that one is difficult to answer, specifically because it is sometimes difficult to tell how long a title has been in development. But it only makes sense that the time it takes to develop a title has increased. You can see some of this to effect as developers are keen to recycle game engines that work as a cost or time-saving measure. Developing titles on a brand new engine is significantly more difficult and time consuming than one developed on an existing, and well established engine.
So how does all of this relate to how used games sales hurt the industry? I'm about to get to that. But first, I have to answer what all of this has to do with the development of new IPs, since that also relates to used games sales. So the cost, time, and difficulty of development have all increased as the technology behind it has advanced. That makes new IPs significantly less attractive to an established company such as Capcom, as a brand new title might require a new engine that does not yet exist, and if you want the largest audience, it needs to go on multiple platforms. And the success of the title can make or break the franchise due to the huge moneysink that development has turned into as technology advanced. So we see companies creating new titles to an existing franchise using a pre-existing engine that works on multiple platforms. From a business perspective, it makes perfect sense to do it that way.
So how does all of this relate to used game sales? Well first off, the company recoups its losses through software sales. The cost of development, debugging, testing, and manufacture are all recouped through game sales and that cost is substantially higher than, for example, books and clothes. Since developers don't see a dime of used game sales, that means they don't recoup their losses incurred through development. Yes, used games are sold at a marginally to substantially cheaper price; which is great for the consumer; but since developers don't see that money they may as well be pissing in the wind. Developers have to compete with a market they shouldn't have to in order to turn a profit. So avenues that remove this threat are seen as a godsend to developers.
What this means is that there's a problem with the used games business model. From their business perspective, it makes sense to buy low and then sell for a substantially inflated price (that is still below market value) because that's how the market thrives. And that might be fine for titles that are difficult to obtain or have been out for awhile. The problem, however, is that it occurs with brand new titles as well, long before developers have a real chance of recouping their losses. In less than a week a title is bought back from a consumer for half or less than half of its market value, then placed back on the shelf in direct competition with its brand new counterpart. You see it all the time: Brand new title out for less than a week being sold used for five to ten dollars less as a used title. And customers eat it up. And the used games business thrives while the developer takes a beating on the wallet. Make no mistake: What Gamestop does, and the way they do it, is shady as hell. I can't say the same for other, similar businesses, but Gamestop itself does, in fact, compete with the developers that make it thrive.
That being said, I support the idea of a used game market. Used games do have the added benefit of creating a marketable audience where one didn't previously exist. And it's great that the reduced prices draw potential customers into new or existing franchises. However, I do not support the current business model, which is in dire need of reformation such that developers stand a chance of regaining their losses. The ideal solution to this would be that developers see a cut of the sales within the market. But don't count on companies like Gamestop to take a cut in revenue to support the developer and don't count on the developers to be reasonable about how much they want out of each sale.
Techdirt has not posted any stories submitted by Fighter Fei.
Re:
For this to matter you'd have to have a Supreme Court that gives a damn about that. 6-3 conservative majority says they can give 0 fucks about anything if it owns the libs.
Objectively speaking...
I don't think anybody here is going to argue that what he did was a crime. Not seriously anyway. His other crimes aside, it's indisputable that he ran the Silk Road operation; and it was an operation. It isn't like he was your dealer down the street either. Given the scale of it, it's easier to compare it to a store or distribution center and I can see the penalties for that causing the sentencing to be ratcheted up.
His conviction is little more than a hollow victory given the serious issues surrounding the investigation and litigation of Ulbricht. I'm sure he can appeal this and have a good chance of sticking it to them. Which is a serious problem because he's guilty and everybody knows he's guilty--I don't disagree with the notion that he ought to be behind bars for it. With all of the issues surrounding the case, no matter how damning the evidence, it's credible that he can get off on a technicality and that's a problem.
The sentencing is incredible, and I'm sure it was set more to make an example out of him than anything. It looks steep because it's meant to look steep. Whether or not the Silk Road itself should have been taken down or exploited by the police is up for debate--I think more good could have been done by leaving it intact with discrete handling, but it's not a hard argument to make that such a thing likely wouldn't be able to last very long.
A much more cynical answer...
Would be to see this as an advertisement to the convenience this precheck baloney offers
Re: It's finally time
That would be a good strategy except the good folks behind TOR have absolutely no reason for noncompliance. CISPA doesn't DISCOURAGE the freeflow of information between parties in any meaningful way (if it does so at all).
What's the point of a "democracy" if the very system put in place to serve the public can ignore the public's dissent toward any law that it wants to pass. Forget reform. All branches of the government have sidestepped the single most valuable asset the public has against it: Fear. A government should fear its people. Ours, quite clearly, does not. As it systematically vandalizes or outright ignores the very checks and balances put in place against it. And we let it happen.
Re: Re: Re: Re: More than a little heavy-handed today, Mike...
You're right about the added risk to a secondhand market. It's a part of the business I didn't consider much. But even assuming that risk overhead is covered by the sales themselves, it is hard to argue that Gamestop isn't competing with developers when it pops used titles back on the shelf mere hours (yes, I have seen hours) or days after a title hits the streets.
This isn't a big problem in other markets, where overhead isn't nearly as high. But the overhead in game development in particular is extraordinarily high. And it goes up with each successive generation.
But by dropping the price quicker, you have to sell more copies of the title to cover development overhead and eventually turn a profit. That part isn't guaranteed whether you drop the price or not and that's true for both markets. And you can expect Gamestop to undercut the new price as well. What you'd wind up with is seeing the two markets bleed themselves dry as they try to compete with one another for dominance while the consumer waited until the price couldn't go any lower before they bought it.
Re: Re: More than a little heavy-handed today, Mike...
Sure. You go right ahead, open up that big, imaginary wallet of yours, and establish a brand new business to compete--directly I might add--in a well-established market against an well-established and entrenched business. You take control of a development firm and create that medium. Oh wait. That's suicide.
To make a long story short: No. From a business perspective it makes more sense to rein in control over the market by cutting them off entirely. Or trying to cooperate with the market that's competing with them. The latter is much more preferable in both markets than the former. And is also the solution we're much more likely to see.
Getting back tot he point at hand: Are you insane? You're trying to tell me that it makes more sense to establish a new service in direct competition with an already established and popular service than work with it to increase revenue gains. If it paid off, the gains would be incredible. But that's an incredulous gamble that no sane developer would take.
More than a little heavy-handed today, Mike...
I'm going to point out that this post applies specifically to console/handheld development and does not address the new advents in the mobile gaming development explicitly because the markets for them and development costs are completely different and non-comparable.
What you point out is, fairly enough, a reasonable portion of the problem. The business model is outdated and the businesses supporting them have yet to upgrade. But upgrading isn't quite so simple in the case of game developers.
This is because game development depends on a variety of factors. All of which can or do severely impact the decisions behind development and I'm going to address some of the ones that I believe are fairly important. I see gamers calling out developers all the time for not developing new IPs--and what they don't realize is just how much of a risk; and how expensive; that has become.
This can be attributed to the large shift in development in terms of multi-platform development. Yes, ten and fifteen years ago we saw multi-platform game development; but that was decidedly less common back then. Same name titles could be--and often were--quite different dependent on the platform because of the engines they were developed on. In truth, this hasn't changed at all from ten and fifteen years ago. What's changed is the way multi-platform games are developed. Back then it was fine for a title across Gameboy, SNES, and Sega Genesis/Mega Drive to be completely different from each other. But now it's become industry standard to homogenize the title(s) as much as possible. This severely complicates development because the hardware limitations of one system have to be taken into consideration when developing for another. This issue becomes most apparent when released titles on one platform suffer from fewer problems than another. For example: The PS3 version of Bayonetta suffered from noticeable framerate drops and screen tearing; it wasn't a deal-breaker, but such problems were nonexistent on the Xbox 360 version. This problem became noticeable in the previous generation, but did not move to the forefront until the current generation of gaming.
It was a natural evolution for the business to want to spread the same title across as many platforms as possible to increase revenue streams and reach target audiences on another platform. As a point of fact, many companies enjoyed relatively substantial growth and success precisely because of it. But that same homogenization has made development more difficult as developers have to compensate for flaws in one system or another. That isn't to say it's the only reason development has become more expensive. In fact, the platforms themselves are another reason development has become more difficult and more expensive.
To be more precise, as the hardware becomes more advanced, the difficulty and cost of development goes up. This is, in part, due to the "console war" of each generation, as the three game giants vie for the top spot and try to distinguish themselves with varying degrees of hardware advancements. The difference in tech on its own makes development harder; but the advancement itself complicates matters further as current techniques in development might not be applicable in the newer generation. It is true that hardware technology is "converging" but this is only in the sense that consoles are becoming more and more like computers with each successive generation (and computers are becoming more and more like general means of entertainment. Hmmm....). The consoles themselves are vastly different from one another in terms of hardware and software. Compare game software to the way computer software on a PC might not be compatible on a MAC and you're pretty close. The console hardware may be converging, but the console software is not. Which goes back to the multi-platform problem.
So, difficulty and cost of development have increased. What about time? Well that one is difficult to answer, specifically because it is sometimes difficult to tell how long a title has been in development. But it only makes sense that the time it takes to develop a title has increased. You can see some of this to effect as developers are keen to recycle game engines that work as a cost or time-saving measure. Developing titles on a brand new engine is significantly more difficult and time consuming than one developed on an existing, and well established engine.
So how does all of this relate to how used games sales hurt the industry? I'm about to get to that. But first, I have to answer what all of this has to do with the development of new IPs, since that also relates to used games sales. So the cost, time, and difficulty of development have all increased as the technology behind it has advanced. That makes new IPs significantly less attractive to an established company such as Capcom, as a brand new title might require a new engine that does not yet exist, and if you want the largest audience, it needs to go on multiple platforms. And the success of the title can make or break the franchise due to the huge moneysink that development has turned into as technology advanced. So we see companies creating new titles to an existing franchise using a pre-existing engine that works on multiple platforms. From a business perspective, it makes perfect sense to do it that way.
So how does all of this relate to used game sales? Well first off, the company recoups its losses through software sales. The cost of development, debugging, testing, and manufacture are all recouped through game sales and that cost is substantially higher than, for example, books and clothes. Since developers don't see a dime of used game sales, that means they don't recoup their losses incurred through development. Yes, used games are sold at a marginally to substantially cheaper price; which is great for the consumer; but since developers don't see that money they may as well be pissing in the wind. Developers have to compete with a market they shouldn't have to in order to turn a profit. So avenues that remove this threat are seen as a godsend to developers.
What this means is that there's a problem with the used games business model. From their business perspective, it makes sense to buy low and then sell for a substantially inflated price (that is still below market value) because that's how the market thrives. And that might be fine for titles that are difficult to obtain or have been out for awhile. The problem, however, is that it occurs with brand new titles as well, long before developers have a real chance of recouping their losses. In less than a week a title is bought back from a consumer for half or less than half of its market value, then placed back on the shelf in direct competition with its brand new counterpart. You see it all the time: Brand new title out for less than a week being sold used for five to ten dollars less as a used title. And customers eat it up. And the used games business thrives while the developer takes a beating on the wallet. Make no mistake: What Gamestop does, and the way they do it, is shady as hell. I can't say the same for other, similar businesses, but Gamestop itself does, in fact, compete with the developers that make it thrive.
That being said, I support the idea of a used game market. Used games do have the added benefit of creating a marketable audience where one didn't previously exist. And it's great that the reduced prices draw potential customers into new or existing franchises. However, I do not support the current business model, which is in dire need of reformation such that developers stand a chance of regaining their losses. The ideal solution to this would be that developers see a cut of the sales within the market. But don't count on companies like Gamestop to take a cut in revenue to support the developer and don't count on the developers to be reasonable about how much they want out of each sale.