|
blackguy32 posted:I think the problem is that they aren't really buying your games and are actually costing you money since the money is being charged back and them having to pay a fine. And if anything it's worse than piracy because it's removing people who would buy your game at some price (even if farther down the line).
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2015 14:03
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 4, 2024 01:01 |
|
|
Yea, I'm all for Publishers taking a more progressive stance on pricing to include as many customers as possible. Part of the blame is on them, part is on brick and mortar stores. But for this situation all the blame is on the key resellers, don't try and make this a "Publisher is screwing me over!" because buying stolen keys you are effectively supporting the act of a much worse company screwing a lot of other people over, including you. So take your anger to the resellers, not the publishers. The publishers just want to create and sell video games as entertainment for as many people as possible. The resellers just want your money so they can continue being shady dick holes stealing peoples identities and credit cards.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2015 14:09
|
|
|
Ularg posted:Yea, I'm all for Publishers taking a more progressive stance on pricing to include as many customers as possible. Part of the blame is on them, part is on brick and mortar stores. But for this situation all the blame is on the key resellers, don't try and make this a "Publisher is screwing me over!" because buying stolen keys you are effectively supporting the act of a much worse company screwing a lot of other people over, including you. So take your anger to the resellers, not the publishers. The publishers just want to create and sell video games as entertainment for as many people as possible. The resellers just want your money so they can continue being shady dick holes stealing peoples identities and credit cards. Haha holy poo poo do you know what a publisher is? Were you just talking about ubisoft? Also I wonder how many people using these sites were not in fact Americans trying to buy 60 dollar games for 5, but more the foreign equivalent of paying 30 bucks for a 120 dollar game.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2015 17:18
|
|
|
This g2a site seems cool, thanks for the tip, gonna buy talos principle now.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2015 17:52
|
|
|
blackguy32 posted:I think the problem is that they aren't really buying your games and are actually costing you money since the money is being charged back and them having to pay a fine. The shady key resaler has already cost them the money with the chargeback, whether people then buy the stolen keys is basically irrelevant to the publisher, they're not going to see the money either way. All voiding keys does is harm the "consumer" and the key resaler, and while it's understandable for the publisher to do so (and certainly within their legal rights), the business reality is that they're extremely unlikely to get any tangible benefit out of voiding already redeemed keys. In the minds of people who've bought those keys, they've already paid for the product and may have had no idea there was anything illegal happening. Voiding unredeemed keys makes sense, since any consumer who buys a key to find out it doesn't work is going to rightfully blame the resaler, not the publisher (though who knows if this is even possible, which may be why they just blanket voided if the majority of the keys are as yet unredeemed) Anyway, even though they haven't actually seen money from the "consumer" in a fraudulent retailer situation, that person may be buying lovely grey market keys because they're a kid with limited income, and will be more likely to go the legal route for your yearly sequels if they feel (rightly or wrongly) that they haven't been scammed by the publisher in the past. I know I 100% stopped buying GFWL games after buying Dead Rising 2 on Steam and had a bunch of titles mysteriously removed from my GFWL account, and neither Steam or MS said they'd do poo poo about it. There were a lot of things wrong with GFWL so I won't claim that sort of thing is why they went under but certainly the underlying business practices structure had something to do with how awful and pointless a system it was. At least UPlay, while being completely unneccesary and kind of a pain in the rear end, seems to function properly for most users.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2015 18:14
|
|
|
VarXX posted:Probably with a stolen credit card too that Ubisoft now has to foot the bill from all the chargebacks SPECULATION WITH NO SOURCES (sorry var)
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2015 19:31
|
|
|
The ethical dispute here seems to me like it is entirely a matter of whether or not all of the revoked keys were stolen/charged-back or not, and no one here seems to know. Assuming they were/they weren't and forming your argument around that is pointless but there are like 7 pages of that here.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2015 19:40
|
|
|
Revoking redeemed keys seems sensible to discourage people from buying from those shady dealers. If they let fellas slip through just because the key is redeemed , then theres not much to dissuade purchases from those dealers if the consumers start counting on companies to cover them in the event of fraudulent activity.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2015 20:29
|
|
|
I've really enjoyed the tantrums from people who think the video games industry exists in a reality independent from economics and the law. You don't understand why a company won't cut the price of their product in half because that's how much YOU want to pay for it? I'd love to buy the next Assassin's Creed, day one from Amazon, for $10, but I'm not a moron who doesn't understand how pricing works. And goods bought with a stolen credit card shouldn't be revoked because it's a precious video game? Seriously?
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2015 21:45
|
|
|
Except they kind of do, you know, seeing as how gray market imports are actually a thing, and that's for actual physical goods. Goods that exist solely in digital format (like most PC video games these days) have no real reason to be different prices in different markets other than loving people over. We live in a global market now. Publishers should realize that the fact people are willing to buy these games from the gray market, rather than pirate them outright, means that there is a reason people are doing that and should perhaps look into what those reasons are rather than sticking their fingers in their ears and singing at the top of their lungs. Regional pricing is loving stupid. People will always look for goods at prices they deem reasonable, and if you're not offering those goods at a reasonable price there will be people who will. This is almost page one, line one of The Big Book of Capitalism, why are video game publishers trying to opt out of it?
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2015 21:57
|
|
|
Was Ubisoft the one that hated used games and felt like it was cash being stolen from them or was that just EA, Sony, and MS?
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2015 22:00
|
|
|
A Stupid Baby posted:Try reading. Yes, because anyone can see that Humble is comparable to subverting regional restrictions using a VPN or buying keys from resellers operating within ethically grey areas.  Thank you for putting me in my place.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2015 22:05
|
|
|
Did somebody say grey-market import?
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2015 22:23
|
|
|
Not everyone buys games digitally. For that reason, publishers still deal with brick and mortar stores and prices are set while taking into account that country's tariffs, sales tax, infrastructure, etc. The publisher can't turn around and sell that same game at a substantial discount online otherwise the physical stores would stop carrying inventory and tell Ubisoft et al. to go gently caress themselves. It's the same reason that, in my very own United States of America, GTA V is the same price on Amazon as it is on the Playstation Store. Of course everything will one day be available digitally for the same price all over the globe, but you can't just snap your fingers and make it happen. How is this so hard to understand?
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2015 22:27
|
|
|
Dinosaurs! posted:Not everyone buys games digitally. For that reason, publishers still deal with brick and mortar stores and prices are set while taking into account that country's tariffs, sales tax, infrastructure, etc. The publisher can't turn around and sell that same game at a substantial discount online otherwise the physical stores would stop carrying inventory and tell Ubisoft et al. to go gently caress themselves. The savings will trickle down eventually
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2015 22:30
|
|
|
computer parts posted:When something that's not a necessity is priced too high for you, the correct response is to not buy it until you can afford it (by them dropping the price). I keep saying this to the Brazilians checking bags filled with American iPhones and flat screen monitors at the airport but they always just give me dirty looks.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2015 22:31
|
|
|
Chomp8645 posted:Ubisoft should fund the next Assassin's Creed game via Kickstarter. Stretch goal- $45,000,000,000,000,000: Female main character made available with season pass purchase.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2015 22:34
|
|
|
Ddraig posted:Except they kind of do, you know, seeing as how gray market imports are actually a thing, and that's for actual physical goods. Goods that exist solely in digital format (like most PC video games these days) have no real reason to be different prices in different markets other than loving people over. I mean, the real reason for regional pricing isn't even publishers though. It's the same for pricing on digital vs physical on a lot of things. Look at comics or whatever too. The reason digital pricing matches physical in store pricing is because if a business or publisher such as Ubisoft or DC comics goes 'well, since we don't need to ship or print anything for these, we can sell it for half off if you get it digitally' then the physical stores get pissed off and threaten to stop selling/carrying said company's products. It's lovely and bad, but you can't really blame Ubisoft for what physical brick and mortar retailers decided is the 'standard' for selling games in other countries. Edit: It's still lovely that it exists and I think that companies should free to go 'gently caress brick and mortar' because it's dumb. But I don't particularly blame publishers in particular for not doing it. KittyEmpress fucked around with this message at 22:49 on Jan 27, 2015 |
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2015 22:39
|
|
|
GENDERWEIRD GREEDO posted:I keep saying this to the Brazilians checking bags filled with American iPhones and flat screen monitors at the airport but they always just give me dirty looks.
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2015 22:41
|
|
|
KittyEmpress posted:I mean, the real reason for regional pricing isn't even publishers though. It's the same for pricing on digital vs physical on a lot of things. Look at comics or whatever too. The reason digital pricing matches physical in store pricing is because if a business or publisher such as Ubisoft or DC comics goes 'well, since we don't need to ship or print anything for these, we can sell it for half off if you get it digitally' then the physical stores get pissed off and threaten to stop selling/carrying said company's products. It's lovely and bad, but you can't really blame Ubisoft for what physical brick and mortar retailers decided is the 'standard' for selling games in other countries. The thing is, dedicated brick and mortar stores only exist because of publishers. The balance of power is very, very much in favor of the publishers when it comes to your gamestops and the like. It would be much, much more detrimental for the lifespan of, say, Gamestop rather than Ubisoft if Ubisoft were to say "Well, we're not giving you our games any more". When it comes to dedicated video game stores, the publishers are very much calling the shots. This is a good thing for Publishers, because it means they can force a specific retail price point (for new games, used is an entirely different thing, which is entirely controlled by the brick and mortar stores, hence why they like to push used sales) This isn't a case of "Plucky little publisher is being held over a barrel by nasty stores", it's more like "Big publisher can force dedicated retail outlets by threatening to pull stock" Bigger stores tend to have more heft, hence why games are often sold at a lower price than other places (e.g. Tesco in the UK)
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2015 22:50
|
|
|
Again, a lot of people still buy physical media. Ubisoft and other publishers aren't still working with GameStop and other brick and mortar stores out of the goodness of their hearts. As much as we like to make fun of Ubisoft, I'm going to blindly trust their CFO over a few entitled gamers on Something Awful Dot Com when it comes to the profitability of not going digital-only yet. GameStop won't go belly up if Ubisoft undercuts them and GS refuses to stock Ubi products. Sure it'll hurt, but there's still EA, Activision, etc, and now Ubisoft is cut off from a major revenue stream while their competitors fill the shelf space. Short of every publisher banding together to form a cartel and force brick and mortar stores to accept low online prices while still selling their products at the traditional full price, it isn't happening. Edit: And of course dedicated brick and mortar stores only exist because of publishers. That's like saying "grocery stores only exist because of food." The supplier still wants to sell their product and those stores give them the means. Dinosaurs! fucked around with this message at 00:28 on Jan 28, 2015 |
|
#
?
Jan 28, 2015 00:25
|
|
|
Of course Ubisoft aren't propping up Gamestop et al out of the goodness of their hearts. They can pretty much say to the retailer "We will give you this, only if you sell it for this" This is why the used market in those particular shops caused such a loving uproar, because those stores found a way to sell products cheaper than the publishers demanded, giving profit entirely to the store. People always seem to get the relationships between publishers and these stores completely rear end backwards. Ubisoft doesn't give a poo poo if Gamestop doesn't stock their products, because Gamestop doesn't have much of a choice. Gamestop plays ball, or they don't get the latest Ubisoft products. This will cause a much, much more noticeable dent in the profitability of Gamestop than it will for Ubisoft. Preorder bonuses for these stores are not ideas by the stores, they're incentives from the publishers to buy products from these stores because the strongarm they've got on that particular market means they can sell product for full price and the store has to agree or they won't get the latest product that they can then sell for the dictated price of the publisher. It's pretty much vertical price fixing.
|
|
#
?
Jan 28, 2015 01:39
|
|
|
So yeah about Ubisoft deactivating legit keys http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...paign=net-daily
|
|
#
?
Jan 28, 2015 21:35
|
|
|
This is really similar to an issue that happened almost 2 years ago where a bunch of people bought shady resold keys for Natural Selection 2. Then it turned out they were bought with money from a stolen credit card, and the result of the chargeback demand was that the game's developer had to pay $30,000. That is a ton of money to just vanish for an indie developer. That would be way less for ubisoft but there are very good demonstrable reasons why companies would crack down on resellers and resold keys.
|
|
#
?
Jan 28, 2015 23:01
|
|
|
I won't blame Ubisoft for banning cd keys from obvious shady resellers. I am at loss on why this is bad PR. Its not like they voided steam bough copy or something...
|
|
#
?
Jan 28, 2015 23:21
|
|
|
A buddy of mine bought Endless Legend for $12 (I think the deepest Steam sale so far has been $17.50) off of some shady Russian site. They didn't even send a key, he received his copy directly through Steam as a gift. Waiting to see if Gaben drops the ban hammer on his account.
|
|
#
?
Jan 28, 2015 23:33
|
|
|
Ddraig posted:Gamestop et al I think the difference is that I don't really point to Gamestop as being the only store. If Ubisoft started selling their online digital products for 20 bucks cheaper, it wouldn't be just Gamestop leaving the market of selling Ubisoft games. It wouldn't just be game stores in general. It would be the Walmarts, the Targets, the Best Buys. It would be the places that make up like 80% of video game purchases for consoles. And you can't even say that they could just do it for PC, because if they do it for just PC, then Ubisoft upsets the big console companies. It's a give and take relationship, and neither hold all the power, but stores like Walmart can take the hit of 'not carrying video games' a lot better than EA could eat 'losing 50% of all our sales'.
|
|
#
?
Jan 28, 2015 23:35
|
|
|
Are these the same high and mighty brick and mortars that shut down huge swathes of their stores across the UK because their business model and prices were so high that it drove them to bankruptcy? Haha, sure they've got the leverage. Maybe in rural USA these stores hold some sway but in the rest of the world online retailers and supermarkets that barely promote anything have smashed them in popularity as game sources.
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2015 09:09
|
|
|
Kin posted:Are these the same high and mighty brick and mortars that shut down huge swathes of their stores across the UK because their business model and prices were so high that it drove them to bankruptcy? It's more than just rural USA. Gamestops are pretty much everywhere over here and I'm pretty sure are doing just fine. But that's probably because the supermarkets are absolutely awful at putting out product. Pokemon X/Y didn't get on the shelf until 2pmish on it's release date at Walmart. The same Walmart wouldn't sell me the Wii U windwaker bundle because "it doesn't come out for a couple more days" and the gamestop across the street had no problem with me just walking in and buying one day 1.
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2015 11:33
|
|
|
So aside from this being a perfectly righteous on Ubisoft's part (anyone caught by this needs to seek refunds from Kinguin / G2A)... What a lot of people don't seem to realize is that if the publishers can not uphold different prices per region, the end result will not be cheaper games for us - it would be more expensive games in Russia / Brazil etc. just like before, which would mean more piracy in those regions. And no I'm no fan of Ubisofts practices in general. The only Ubisoft games I have bought since Far Cry 3 have been Blood Dragon and AC:4 on very deep Steam discounts. Hamburger Test fucked around with this message at 12:36 on Jan 29, 2015 |
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2015 12:33
|
|
|
Byolante posted:So yeah about Ubisoft deactivating legit keys But if I don't support crime how else will I obtain my entertainment?? 
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2015 12:44
|
|
|
Hamburger Test posted:So aside from this being a perfectly righteous on Ubisoft's part (anyone caught by this needs to seek refunds from Kinguin / G2A)... Yeah it's absolutely impossible to charge any less than $100 for a game in Australia clearly they'll just destroy their markets in several continents.
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2015 13:04
|
|
|
I'll admit I don't know what's going on in Australia. But if you're in the EU or US and believe that the big publishers will ever accept tanking their prices in these regions to Russian levels you are incredibly naive, and that is what will happen happen if they don't try to curb the key resellers.
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2015 13:10
|
|
|
Hamburger Test posted:What a lot of people don't seem to realize is that if the publishers can not uphold different prices per region, the end result will not be cheaper games for us - it would be more expensive games in Russia / Brazil etc. just like before, which would mean more piracy in those regions.
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2015 13:30
|
|
|
Hamburger Test posted:I'll admit I don't know what's going on in Australia. But if you're in the EU or US and believe that the big publishers will ever accept tanking their prices in these regions to Russian levels you are incredibly naive, and that is what will happen happen if they don't try to curb the key resellers. Nobody is saying that they're going to reduce the world prices of games to match Russias, but the idea that the most profitable price for a world price on video games happens to be $60 USD / £40 seems like an absurdly bold claim.
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2015 13:32
|
|
|
Darkhold posted:Yeah this is the crap publishers tell themselves but Steam has spent the last ten years showing the opposite. Sure they may refuse to acknowledge the global market and force higher prices onto certain regions but that's just them hanging onto their preconceived notions and not how the market is actually working. Gentleman Baller posted:Nobody is saying that they're going to reduce the world prices of games to match Russias, but the idea that the most profitable price for a world price on video games happens to be $60 USD / £40 seems like an absurdly bold claim. I never said they would be smart about it, just that they'd apply the higher price in low income regions.
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2015 13:58
|
|
|
Kin posted:Are these the same high and mighty brick and mortars that shut down huge swathes of their stores across the UK because their business model and prices were so high that it drove them to bankruptcy? Also the Game situation was ridiculous because they essentially destroyed their own market by buying the competition.
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2015 16:23
|
|
|
There'll always be a place for selling physical copies of games. Some people like me just like having physical copies, some don't have the bandwidth or speeds to download games. It's silly to think that Gamestop would just die because a digital version of the game is $20 off. If anything Gamestop would probably kill themselves with their aggressive used policy and their bullying of similar businesses. Even in rural US I rather go to a mom & pop video game store than a Gamestop or Walmart. It just seems these publishers have convinced themselves that they would never get any business if they give an actual incentive and pay a reasonable price for bits of 0s and 1s.
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2015 16:30
|
|
|
Gamers as a whole are noted for being a discerning and reasonable group of consumers, not easily given to pre-release advertising hype or overspending on microtransactions on pay-for-power products.
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2015 16:37
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 4, 2024 01:01 |
|
|
Hamburger Test posted:I'll admit I don't know what's going on in Australia. But if you're in the EU or US and believe that the big publishers will ever accept tanking their prices in these regions to Russian levels you are incredibly naive, and that is what will happen happen if they don't try to curb the key resellers. 
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2015 16:39
|
|