User information for Gdiguy

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Gdiguy
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Gdiguy
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Signed On
March 5, 2001
Total Posts
144 (Novice)
User ID
9228
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144 Comments. 8 pages. Viewing page 1.
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118.
 
Re: MW2 Key Bans
Nov 24, 2009, 21:43
Re: MW2 Key Bans Nov 24, 2009, 21:43
Nov 24, 2009, 21:43
 
Gogamer sells import copies of many titles. Which is why the comparison was made in the first place.

Yeah, but once you have to pay customs and shipping, it's unlikely that you can make enough of a profit while at the same time undercutting the US price. And again, if it's a few scattered people trying to import a game that's only sold in Japan, then I'll agree with you that I don't see a problem at all

The other issue that hasn't been addressed at all. How do you justify Activision being paid for these CD keys and then disabling them afterwards. Do you think it is fair for them to keep that money without delivering anything in return?

I don't see what Activision did wrong here; they sold, let's say, 100 keys to a cybercafe in China for a reduced rate, with the understanding that those keys would be used in those cybercafes and not resold to US customers. If the company then resold them to US customers, Activision has no idea that they were resold improperly until 99 people from the US register their copy of the game. Furthermore, what do you want them to return - the pro-rated percent of the sale that Activision actually got (minus markup, taxes, distributor cuts, etc etc)? The entire sale, so that they actually lose money?

That's been my whole point all along - the party that is actually (and legally) in the wrong is the reseller, who very likely violated an agreement to not resell those keys in the US (whether explicitly, or as part of some giant EULA that of course probably hasn't been tested in court). Customers who bought them (while I do personally think they got what they deserved) should certainly demand either a refund or a new key that's actually legitimate in the US from that reseller, and if the reseller loses money on the whole deal, that's too bad for them.
112.
 
Re: MW2 Key Bans
Nov 24, 2009, 15:53
Re: MW2 Key Bans Nov 24, 2009, 15:53
Nov 24, 2009, 15:53
 

Doesn't look good at this point...I wonder how much farther things need to go before consumers stop supporting this nonsense.

The problem is, consumers stopped supporting it before this nonsense.

I know that on the internet it's the popular and cool opinion to say that piracy is all just people trying out games before they go out and buy the ones they want, but we've all heard the story about how Tribes had more people playing multiplayer at once than had actually bought the game, and having been in college fairly recently, I tend to believe that's more the norm than the outlier.

That's from the company side; from the consumer side, PC gaming is more frustrating and more expensive, which doesn't seem worth it to a lot of people (especially now that people are buying themselves giant HDTVs for their living room)

Which brings it full circle - if you want to know why companies don't give a shit about PC gaming anymore, it's because if customers don't pirate the game outright, they go to extreme lengths (which I would consider buying foreign versions of the game) to pay as absolutely little as possible for it. Why would you want to devote yourself to a market like that?
111.
 
Re: MW2 Key Bans
Nov 24, 2009, 15:43
Re: MW2 Key Bans Nov 24, 2009, 15:43
Nov 24, 2009, 15:43
 
You do not blame or punish the consumer for resale, you punish the resellers. It's like this in every major market in the world. Banning GoGamer isn't completely different by the way, you just have no response to it. If Steam decided that GoGamer wasn't allowed anymore, I'm sure we'd see you here finding a way to defend that decision too. The bottom line is that you are anti-consumer, every post in this thread by you is about blaming the consumer and forcing the consumer to assume responsibility. Where is the responsibility on Valve's part for allowing keys to be used outside of their supposedly intended regions? Which coincidentally they have no protection in place to protect these supposed restrictions?

First of all, your claim that people would be defending them if they banned a company selling US keys cheap is garbage, and it adds nothing to the conversation to make baseless bullshit insults at people.

Further, how far does that extend? If it's a little stand in the mall selling knock-off SNES's with game roms, yeah, Nintendo is going to shut them down but not go after people that purchased them. But again, we're talking about a situation with no limit on sales and no shipping / transportation costs. If 10 people bought their keys this way, then Valve would probably not bother, but where's the cutoff? Is it 1,000 people doing it this way? 100,000? There's a point at which the money they lose on each sale by having people purchase the heavily discounted Asian version over the US version outweighs the desire to not blame consumers.

The other part to that, it used to be that importing games was naturally limited by language barriers - there's a limited number of people that are going to want to play a Chinese language version of a game in the US, regardless what price it's sold for. If it's the exact same product, there's no reason not to buy it from an international source
99.
 
Re: MW2 Key Bans
Nov 23, 2009, 20:17
99.
Re: MW2 Key Bans Nov 23, 2009, 20:17
Nov 23, 2009, 20:17
 
Games aren't a life saving product; they're luxury items. Tell me, does Ferrari sell their cars at a discount in Africa too?

Since you're so smart, and say it's not price gouging, why don't you tell us what price gouging is...

If they wanted to sell cars in China to anyone but the top 1% of wage earners, they damn well better. But with the Ferarri thing you're again creating a false argument - the problem there is that there's a base cost to the product that they can't go below. If the parts of the car cost $50,000, there's no way they can price it low enough to sell to anyone but the most wealthy

With a PC game (especially sold online as a key-only), there's almost no production cost per unit. So if you start with a baseline of "we're going to price our product to make back our costs in the developed world", you can then set a price for less wealthy regions that encourages them to not just pirate the game, while making a (not huge, but at least token) profit out of the region.

But the real question is, what's the difference between "price gouging" and "charging people a price that allows us to sell enough to make a profit"?

You seem to be making two assumptions:
1) The price being charged in the US is far more than warranted by the costs
2) If you evened the price out worldwide, the price in the US would drop significantly towards the lower price being charged elsewhere.

(1) you can maybe argue with (though with the amount of development houses closing left and right, and the losses companies not publishing WoW are reporting...)

(2) Does anyone believe at all that the US price would drop if the prices were the same worldwide?

This comment was edited on Nov 23, 2009, 20:25.
98.
 
Re: MW2 Key Bans
Nov 23, 2009, 20:17
98.
Re: MW2 Key Bans Nov 23, 2009, 20:17
Nov 23, 2009, 20:17
 

I don't understand why anyone is mad at people trying to spend less money on any game. Like that is somehow cheating? ...
The only people gaming the system are the companies in this case. You go right ahead and do that, I'll decide how much I pay for the games as long as there is competition to enable that choice legally.

I don't see where you're arguing anything different. I don't generally buy used games because it doesn't support the developers (and, you don't really save that much money - especially from Gamestop, who seem to make it a personal goal to rip you off as much as possible), but I'm not going to argue with you that wanting to buy the same product for less is somehow wrong or immoral

The problem is:
I love how you can't seem to crack through that Bullshit world you see where people are skirting the legal laws by buying games at a lower price than major retailers try and sell them

If ebaycdkeys.com wants to buy $10,000 keys and sell them at below-market cost, I don't care, as long as they purchased them legitimately. That's the entire issue - if Valve went out into the marketplace and said "we'll sell bulk serial #'s for below market value, but we'd like you to sell them at full price", and someone buys them and goes "nope, I'd rather make $0.01 profit on each one to drive sales", more power to them. However, that's not what's happening here.


Like I said before, there's really two options here:
1) They charge the same price around the world
2) They region lock the game so that you have to pay the going rate in that country

(1) is perhaps fundamentally more fair, and avoids this conflict, but it ensures that absolutely NO one will purchase the product instead of pirating it in less wealthy nations

This comment was edited on Nov 23, 2009, 20:25.
67.
 
Re: Steam Bans Grey Market MW2 Keys
Nov 22, 2009, 01:07
67.
Re: Steam Bans Grey Market MW2 Keys Nov 22, 2009, 01:07
Nov 22, 2009, 01:07
 
I think we are probably just going to go around in circles here, but the entire reason I have a problem with this is because, from all accounts, these are legit paid for keys. No different than if I took a trip to Japan, purchased a game and brought it home with me.

This is the crux of the problem; if it's one person that travels over there, spending $500 on airfare to save $10 on a game, then it's not a big deal. In the internet age, though, one person there can quite easily buy 10,000 copies and re-sell them to individuals in the US, then it becomes a major problem. It's the problem of having a digital good - there's zero transportation cost involved in selling across borders

Look, there's really only two possibilities here - either
1) The game is sold at the exact same price globally, at a price point which maximizes the revenue for the company (which basically means the US/Euro price), which means the price is vastly out of proportion to income in developing areas (which then means that they'll sell basically zero non-pirated copies in those areas)
2) The game is sold at a cost somewhat relative to (a) the wealth of that country, such that it's actually reasonable to ask people in developing countries to legally purchase it, which requires some sort of control on the good to restrict it to that region, and (b) the nature of the organization purchasing it, such that a cyber cafe / whatever can be encouraged to legally purchase a number of licenses instead of pirating the game, which also requires controlling the ability of those licenses to be spread outside that industry

To go back to someone else's example - it's the exact same situation as Microsoft selling corporate windows licenses. It makes perfect sense to sell one giant corporate license to a company, both for cost and for ease of use (not having to keep tract of tens of thousands of windows licenses), but if companies start reselling them it would destroy the value of the individual licenses

Now, if you want to argue that Valve should pro-actively create different types of key #'s, such that it's obvious that they're region restricted / etc, I might not disagree with you... but again, it's probably the case that Valve really doesn't generally want to bother with this (as long as it doesn't become a major problem), and it's only when they start seeing a fairly large # of people taking advantage of the loophole that they need to take action

Value conscience consumers incentivize companies to be more efficient and offer more value in their products. Which in turn benefits all consumers, even you.

I've purchased most of the AAA 360 titles over the past couple years, and I don't think I've paid less than 25% off the entire time. If you don't think a game has $60 worth of value to you, if you wait 3 months you can easily get it for $40 (and probably less), without resorting to buying from questionable sources or importing Chinese versions or whatever.

The problem is that most gamers want to have both - they want to not pay full price (generously), but they also NEED to have it the week that it comes out.

This comment was edited on Nov 22, 2009, 01:14.
14.
 
Re: Steam Bans Grey Market MW2 Keys
Nov 21, 2009, 00:39
14.
Re: Steam Bans Grey Market MW2 Keys Nov 21, 2009, 00:39
Nov 21, 2009, 00:39
 
I'm sure they're not, because the keys they bought in those 4 packs are perfectly legitimate US keys

A good example is onlinekeystore. They sell keys that are valid, and can be used through steam, D2D, EA's store and so on. Yet they're around 30% cheaper then anyone else.

And how do you know they're valid, legitimate for resale in the US keys other than 'EA hasn't banned these yet'?

To me, it's the exact same thing as buying a VCR off the back of a truck on a street in Queens; is it possible that it's perfectly legal, that some store dumped a bunch on clearance and this guy is reselling them for a small profit? Sure... but it's also possible that they were stolen off the back of a truck, or they're cheap knockoffs

It's true for anything - are itunes gift card #'s sold on Ebay legit? I'm sure plenty of them are (stores have 10% off sales occasionally, someone could buy a ton of them and sell them for 5% off), but if someone's selling a $50 gift card for $10, I'd be much more likely to believe it's keygenned / bought with a stolen CC than to believe that it's legitimate

The detachment of buying stuff online instead of from some sketchy guy on the corner has somehow let people lose their ability to rationally think that if a deal is just too good, there's probably something wrong with it. There are legitimate reasons for buying from a store that has a reputation to uphold - I'm pretty confident Amazon won't sell me something like this, whereas I have zero confidence "onlinekeystore.com" will, because their potential downside is significantly bigger

This comment was edited on Nov 21, 2009, 00:47.
8.
 
Re: Steam Bans Grey Market MW2 Keys
Nov 20, 2009, 23:37
8.
Re: Steam Bans Grey Market MW2 Keys Nov 20, 2009, 23:37
Nov 20, 2009, 23:37
 
This comes across as a draconian move by Valve. It's possible to be right and wrong at the same time. They could have given some notice and/or a $5 discount while expiring the keys that were certainly already paid-for.

Why? They already gave notice a couple years ago when THE EXACT SAME THING happened with Half Life 2

I love the outrage here - if they didn't do this, everyone would be bitching about how Valve is refusing to help cyber cafe's, or how charging $50 for a game in China is just asking to be pirated when the average wage is so low. Instead, they try to cut those groups a break, and it's suddenly an outrage that they don't let everyone pay a tenth of the price

*edit

I completely agree that the group actually in the wrong here is the sellers, who sold a license they weren't legally allowed to sell, but Valve doesn't have any responsibility to compensate people for cyber cafes ripping them off.

That's the risk you run buying a game code off a random person on Ebay - your only recourse is to hope that the harm to their ebay rating is enough to prevent them from being dishonest about refunding or selling things they aren't legally allowed to sell

This comment was edited on Nov 20, 2009, 23:39.
8.
 
Re: Star Trek Online Open Beta Signups
Nov 20, 2009, 00:52
8.
Re: Star Trek Online Open Beta Signups Nov 20, 2009, 00:52
Nov 20, 2009, 00:52
 
It's all a big conspiracy by the Post Office to get scammers to develop better automated text-reading software for free

This comment was edited on Nov 20, 2009, 00:53.
17.
 
Re: Third Call of Duty Team and MMO Rumors
Nov 19, 2009, 02:13
17.
Re: Third Call of Duty Team and MMO Rumors Nov 19, 2009, 02:13
Nov 19, 2009, 02:13
 
Yeah, I don't think there's really a question that eventually someone will make an extremely well done, fun, polished FPS MMO and make WoW-like money; they might as well see if they can come up with anything. Obviously "CoD4 with monthly payments!" is going to get laughed at (I hope to god), but there's a wide open space there

The problem is that the road is littered with garbage that loses money hand over fist, so we'll see
13.
 
Re: Spike VGA Nominees
Nov 18, 2009, 18:46
13.
Re: Spike VGA Nominees Nov 18, 2009, 18:46
Nov 18, 2009, 18:46
 
The problem is that they want to have it before the year is over, so they're stuck either not including games released 2 months before the year is over (which would look bad in a month from now during the award broadcast if it really is the best game), or including games that look like they will probably be good but aren't really possible to judge yet

And while I'm still looking forward to playing Dragon Age (boo for not having time anymore), an RPG is never going to beat action games in an award like this (from a gaming mag, maybe; from Spike TV? nope)
5.
 
Re: Tiberian Twilight??? 4 Realz?????...
Nov 12, 2009, 15:15
5.
Re: Tiberian Twilight??? 4 Realz?????... Nov 12, 2009, 15:15
Nov 12, 2009, 15:15
 
Marketing Professional at EA: What's the name of that teen chick flick with the vampires?
EA Lackey: Twilight.
Marketing Professional at EA: That's it! Yeah, we'll name our game after that. Twilight of Tiberium. No. Um Kane's Twilight. No. Um Tiberium Twilight! That's it!!! Now we'll finally have Warner Brothers secure the film rights to our successful franchise MUhahhahahahhahahaahahahhh!!

While that was very clever, the first one was actually named "Tiberian Dawn", and the second one was "Tiberian Sun" - Tiberian Twilight was a fairly obvious name for the final one, and I'm pretty sure those two names had actually leaked even before Tiberian Sun had come out (which was why the whole 'have a contest to select the name!' thing for this one was so stupid)

But yeah, I'm not buying this until we see what actually happens to post-release support
6.
 
Re: No subject
Mar 8, 2007, 04:06
6.
Re: No subject Mar 8, 2007, 04:06
Mar 8, 2007, 04:06
 
Fairly impressive... not that I'm really interested in buying it, but I'll have to try to remember this for future Atari stuff

71.
 
Re: ...
Mar 1, 2007, 03:26
71.
Re: ... Mar 1, 2007, 03:26
Mar 1, 2007, 03:26
 
That's probably because the controls aren't traditional C&C controls, they're using the right-click to move that was more the Warcraft thing... =)

I've found myself clicking the wrong way many times

5.
 
Re: Espionage?
Feb 8, 2007, 19:58
5.
Re: Espionage? Feb 8, 2007, 19:58
Feb 8, 2007, 19:58
 
Well, it depends how you define "espionage"... in some sense, a Rainbow 6-style "infiltrate this compound and bug the drug lord's phones" is espionage, and there's an obvious multiplayer mechanism to that

I think 24 is probably a poor example because it's not really a group-based thing, but I could picture something in the vein of Alias or that CBS show The Unit... now, whether the network infrastructure is truly there to be able to do a game like this when they couldn't even handle planetside is another matter

The somewhat unfortunate thing is that this would almost be better suited to the ps3/360, where they can ensure that everyone has broadband (and with the 360, integrate voice chat) and it might solve a lot of the problems..
This comment was edited on Feb 8, 19:59.
10.
 
Re: No subject
Jan 23, 2007, 11:41
10.
Re: No subject Jan 23, 2007, 11:41
Jan 23, 2007, 11:41
 
To be honest, a "new" server is actually probably one of the worst, since a lot of people wanted to make characters on a fresh server with the launch... I'd try an old server that's listed as Medium (or Low if there're any?) pop and see if you still get the same issues.

5.
 
Re: Train
Dec 25, 2006, 00:53
5.
Re: Train Dec 25, 2006, 00:53
Dec 25, 2006, 00:53
 
I hate msn with a passion... and I really don't understand why AIM hasn't incorporated offline messages yet (since AOL has owned icq for what, 5+ years now?)

I still use trillian for aim + icq though, so I have zero idea how the clients still are

19.
 
Re: No subject
Dec 22, 2006, 17:06
19.
Re: No subject Dec 22, 2006, 17:06
Dec 22, 2006, 17:06
 
Well this is annoying, I spent the money to buy a 2-year warrantee from MicroCenter specifically because of the 90 day one (and the problems they were having)... I wonder if they'll bother extending theirs

8.
 
Re: No subject
Dec 22, 2006, 17:04
8.
Re: No subject Dec 22, 2006, 17:04
Dec 22, 2006, 17:04
 
The soundtrack cd with TS actually wasn't horrible, and certainly was a lot more worthwhile than most of the other junk that gets thrown in as Collector's Editions nowadays

I don't remember, has it been announced at all if there was going to be a map editor?

3.
 
Re: ESA awarded legal fees
Dec 2, 2006, 16:33
3.
Re: ESA awarded legal fees Dec 2, 2006, 16:33
Dec 2, 2006, 16:33
 
Why would it; he doesn't have to pay the legal fees, he just has to continue finding politicians willing to blow taxpayer money to look tough on social values.

144 Comments. 8 pages. Viewing page 1.
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