MMX Release Date

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Dalai
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Re: MMX Release Date

Unread postby Dalai » 29 Mar 2013, 13:53

GreatEmerald wrote:It's more of an issue to understand what you're trying to represent here - your own views, or the views or some general mass of people. Or both, or neither...
Or an issue of reading diagonally.
Yeap, you either have a choice to trust online services, or keep the installer in local storage. A third alternative does not, and never will, exist, since it's just impossible.
Until we count alternatives. Let's do it right now.
1. I keep my purchased software "in the cloud" - Steam, GOG, Origin, etc.
2. I download the installer and create a local copy.
3. I purchase a factory-made DVD.

Behold the impossible.
It does describe the whole situation for those who are DRM-conscious. If I don't buy games with DRM, I don't have any issues with DRM.
Let's discuss the problem for a subset of people, who don't purchase software at all. Oh, there are no problems! Great!

When GOG will offer some meaningful amount of new games we can return to this argument. None of the games I wanted to play last couple years are present on GOG. No hope for high-quality games, like XCOM. Even MM:H6 is not there! (not that I ever planned to buy it anyway)
Objection! There is no such thing as "intellectual property".
Overruled. Laws active today in most countries say differently.
Millions? No. The ones that are paranoid or want to be absolutely certain? Yes. The technologies are there for a reason, and they do help. It's only a matter of being aware of the options.
It's not about paranoia. I just pointed out that digital distribution does not "just make it cheaper". It's more complex and has a lot of other consequences. Some of them under certain conditions may be very serious.
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MMX Release Date

Unread postby hellegennes » 29 Mar 2013, 14:27

What the heck are you talking about? What equipment and what cost of my time? It's not a job and you don't need special equipment. This is not the 90's, the equipment I need for burning DVDs is already part of my system, which is already used for reading DVDs. Why are you putting a price tag on the time that it takes to burn a DVD, which by the way is 5 minutes max? If by that you mean that you spend valuable time burning the DVD, then you should also consider it for buying physical format copies, too. Downloading the game and burning it on a DVD takes a maximum of 10 minutes of my time; driving or walking to a store, takes much, MUCH more.



Download VS physical cost is not usually about the same. It's never a huge different, because of what GreatEmerald said, which is also what I have said from the start. It's convenient for both you and the developer (which by the way is in many cases the publisher, too).



Your undisputable facts are not at all undisputable. The process of cutting a copy in a factory is cheaper, but the whole process of selling it makes it a lot more expensive.



And by the way, I pay a lot of taxes. The rate of my income tax is 27%, which applies even if I only earn $100 the whole year (I am self-employed). Hence, I am not really thrilled if I have to pay another 23% for VAT. And of course there are tens of other tax types, with which I won't bore you, because this is already off topic.



My point is that an imported title is already taxed when it leaves its country of origin and gets taxed again when it enters another country. And because local shops and local publishers work on comission, the more expensive the game is when it leaves the original publisher, the greater the difference between burning the DVD myself and buying it from a shop. Cue Heroes 6 was priced at no less than $60 on all local shops in my hometown. Currently, Heroes VI complete is priced at $55 at all local shops.

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Unread postby Variol » 29 Mar 2013, 14:56

I've purchased a few games via download. Eschelon book 1 - Lands of infinity... I think the main thing though, is having a good physical manual. I do not like reading the PDF files on a screen. Plus, it's hard to play and read the digital manual simultaneously.
Burning to CD/DVD is quick, but it's already a thing of the past.

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Re: MMX Release Date

Unread postby GreatEmerald » 29 Mar 2013, 15:17

Dalai wrote:That's interesting. I think you and GreatEmerald have something to discuss, as he thinks that
Nope, we're actually in agreement. If the raw cost to the publisher is $20, they have a few options. If they are greedy, they will sell it for $30, and thus people who buy the downloadable version will pay $10 extra for no real reason. If they are generous, they will sell it for $20, and will suffer a loss from every DVD sold, but the downloadable price will be fair. Or they can do a mix of that and sell it for $25, hoping that the loss from DVD sales offsets the surplus they gain from downloadable sales. Or, as mentioned before, they could sell it for a different price, but in that case local shops will not be pleased.
Dalai wrote:Until we count alternatives. Let's do it right now.
1. I keep my purchased software "in the cloud" - Steam, GOG, Origin, etc.
2. I download the installer and create a local copy.
3. I purchase a factory-made DVD.

Behold the impossible.
1. Trusting online services.
2. Keeping the installer in local storage.
3. Keeping the installer in local storage.

There is no functional difference between the last two. They share the same advantages and disadvantages.
Dalai wrote:When GOG will offer some meaningful amount of new games we can return to this argument. None of the games I wanted to play last couple years are present on GOG. No hope for high-quality games, like XCOM. Even MM:H6 is not there! (not that I ever planned to buy it anyway)
And in my case, they offer a plenty. The thing is that what you find meaningful is not what I find meaningful. There are plenty of people who are content with what GOG.com offers. It's all a matter of opinion.
Dalai wrote:Overruled. Laws active today in most countries say differently.
By all means, point me to it. And point the Free Software Foundation to it, too - after all, they must be wrong about this, right?
Dalai wrote:Or an issue of reading diagonally.
Well, at least these two posts clarified what you are trying to say - that physical DVD copies are good. Well, good to know. Because previously that wasn't clear to me.

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MMX Release Date

Unread postby phamlongtuan » 30 Mar 2013, 16:27

Does any one here actually ever ever ever ever use steam



1. First you need 1 account

2. You buy your game

3. It stays in your account forever (Steam going strong for 10 years already)

4. You can download your game after that

5. You can copy it to as many computer as you can

6. 1 for home, 1 for work, 1 for girlfriend house, 1 for your grandma house, 1 for your granddad house, 1 for vv..........

7. It takes like 10 mins for download with good internet speed



Do not start flame, it is no sense, digital copy way better than physical. Unless it is a big game with alot of premium content and gift for veteran player

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Unread postby ThunderTitan » 30 Mar 2013, 20:34

You're assuming everyone you know has internet access...


You know, i wonder if the law here still says that once i bought it d/l a pirated copy isn't illegal, or if they changed it... originally i started buying games on Steam (discounted, always) with the knowledge that if it ever failed i can just get them from the internet anyway...
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Re: MMX Release Date

Unread postby GreatEmerald » 30 Mar 2013, 20:56

phamlongtuan wrote:>Does any one here actually ever ever ever ever use steam

>1. First you need 1 account
>2. You buy your game
>3. It stays in your account forever (Steam going strong for 10 years already)
>4. You can download your game after that
>5. You can copy it to as many computer as you can
>6. 1 for home, 1 for work, 1 for girlfriend house, 1 for your grandma house, 1 for your granddad house, 1 for vv..........
>7. It takes like 10 mins for download with good internet speed
0. No.
1. Yes.
2. Yes.
3. No. Steam will go down eventually, and at that point all your games are gone. And there already have been times when Steam servers went down, and all of peoples' games were gone for the time being.
4. Yes.
5. No. Most definitely not. If you copy the game somewhere else, it will not run, since it depends on Steam libraries and Steam backend running in the background. Unless the game is one of those few non-DRM games.
6. No. See point 5.
7. No. It depends on the size of the game, and recent games are huge. Plus not everyone has a good internet connection. From what I hear, the US has a surprisingly poor situation with internet speed. We here in Lithuania mostly have optical fibre, so no problems there, but not all countries have such technology.

Plus you're missing a lot of other things that Steam does wrong. For one, its EULA reserves the right to install spyware on your PC. It also reserves the right to remove access from all your games if you break a rule somewhere, without informing you. They have also been known to do that even if the person himself did not break the rules, but was a false positive, and appealing is nigh-impossible. Then there is the issue that Steam has to always run in the background, eating your resources for no reason, and it always has to validate your right to run the game's executables, making the load times longer for no real reason, even if the only thing you are trying to do is open the level editor.

I'm not fine with either of those. First of all I do not accept their EULA, so I can't install Steam to begin with.

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Unread postby GreatEmerald » 30 Mar 2013, 21:00

ThunderTitan wrote:> You know, i wonder if the law here still says that once i bought it d/l a pirated copy isn't illegal, or if they changed it... originally i started buying games on Steam (discounted, always) with the knowledge that if it ever failed i can just get them from the internet anyway...
Not sure about the law (I assume it's different in different countries), but another thing you need to consider is the internal copy protection measures of the games. Some games have DRM along Steam's DRM, and it may or may not allow you to run them if you use a non-Steam version. However, I do know for a fact that at least in some games, Steam provides a CD key, and the CD key works on non-Steam versions of the game just fine as well. But I don't know whether this is a wide-spread phenomenon or not.

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MMX Release Date

Unread postby hellegennes » 30 Mar 2013, 22:14

@ΤΤ:



It's actually both legal and illegal. And here's why... International copyright laws state that what you buy is the right to use copyrighted material for your own use. From the moment you own the right to use the material (for yourself), it matters not how you choose to store it and how many times you copy it and by what means, as long as it always remains for personal use only. I have mp3 copies of all the albums I legally own, on all of my digital devices. I am breaking no law because I have already bought the right to listen to them.



Do not let companies fool you, you don't buy the material which comes with the copy, you just defray its manufacturing, shipping, taxing and commission costs*. What you buy is the rights. There are companies that will hand you over a new copy if you have worn out your old one, without charging you again (Loreena McKennitt's record company, Quinlan Road, once did that for me; I only paid for shipping).



Now, EULAs -and some times, state laws- state all kinds of stupid things, like restricting you from making a copy or restricting you to only use your bought copy, but these claims are all bogus and don't hold water to any court, in most civilised countries (I don't know what happens in the United States though :p). Companies try to pull all sorts of new methods of making you rebuy the rights again and again, such as "watch only once DVDs" or pushing countries to adopt restrictions in format shifting. But these actually violate consumer rights in almost all countries of the Solar System. I do not know what happens outside it, though. Now, it's technically illegal to do whatever the heck you want with your copy, but many countries do formally allow you to keep copies of your owned material. Too many times corporations tried to negate this right, but it was reaffirmed time after time, as the famous Betamax Case teaches us. The USA congress passed the AHRA act in 1992, which formally allows format shifting and space shifting, which practically is copying of your material from one format to another and one media to another (from your PC to your mp3 player, for example). Of course, strictly speaking, downloading the file from a pirated copy is illegal, but if you own the piece of work already, it's essentially the same as spaceshifting it yourself from your own copy. No court would deny that. Saying that it's actually illegal is like saying that not declaring pocket money constitutes tax evasion.





* in the sense that they don't earn anything from the material itself, ideally.
Edited on Sat, Mar 30 2013, 18:16 by hellegennes

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Re: MMX Release Date

Unread postby Dalai » 06 Apr 2013, 20:06

hellegennes wrote:What the heck are you talking about? What equipment and what cost of my time? It's not a job and you don't need special equipment.
It doesn't make it free.
This is not the 90's, the equipment I need for burning DVDs is already part of my system, which is already used for reading DVDs.
No, it's not. DVD writer and DVD reader are different things. Their reliability is also different. There are tons of DVD-writers that can only read after some time. I own 2 of them.
Why are you putting a price tag on the time that it takes to burn a DVD, which by the way is 5 minutes max? If by that you mean that you spend valuable time burning the DVD, then you should also consider it for buying physical format copies, too. Downloading the game and burning it on a DVD takes a maximum of 10 minutes of my time; driving or walking to a store, takes much, MUCH more.
You jump from 5 to 10 minutes inside 1 paragraph, it makes a 100% difference. In reality it's closer to 30 minutes, as you need to purchase the game, find download link, check if you have enough space on selected disk and dozen more little things. Now if we consider that modern game takes more than standard 4,4G DVD, we go so much further from 5 minutes. Just as we went very far from "10 cents" little earlier.

As for driving to a store - I can see why you ignore what I write and invent the least effective way of doing things to make a desired comparison. I bet I can fill out order form much quicker than you can open Nero or whatever you use. Then it will take 10 more seconds to get DVD from mail box.
Download VS physical cost is not usually about the same. It's never a huge different, because of what GreatEmerald said, which is also what I have said from the start. It's convenient for both you and the developer (which by the way is in many cases the publisher, too).
I don't see how having a worse copy is convenient to me. And yes, developer is almost NEVER the same as publisher. I can't imagine where those "many cases" come from.
Your undisputable facts are not at all undisputable. The process of cutting a copy in a factory is cheaper, but the whole process of selling it makes it a lot more expensive.
That is exactly why I say exactly nothing about "the whole process of selling". The only purpose of adding it to my argument is to make it "not at all undisputable", isn't it?
And by the way, I pay a lot of taxes. The rate of my income tax is 27%, which applies even if I only earn $100 the whole year (I am self-employed). Hence, I am not really thrilled if I have to pay another 23% for VAT. And of course there are tens of other tax types, with which I won't bore you, because this is already off topic.
Yes, it is.
My point is that an imported title is already taxed when it leaves its country of origin and gets taxed again when it enters another country.
No, it's not. Export is generally tax free, so it is taxed only once in importing country. Game DVDs are definitely not the exception to this rule.
And because local shops and local publishers work on comission, the more expensive the game is when it leaves the original publisher, the greater the difference between burning the DVD myself and buying it from a shop. Cue Heroes 6 was priced at no less than $60 on all local shops in my hometown. Currently, Heroes VI complete is priced at $55 at all local shops.
And in 10 years it will cost 0.99$. What kind of argument is that?
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Re: MMX Release Date

Unread postby Dalai » 06 Apr 2013, 20:30

GreatEmerald wrote: Nope, we're actually in agreement.
I'm happy for you, but I can only comment on what you post here. And prices of the same game in two different distribution channels are either the same of different. In any case one of you is wrong.
If the raw cost to the publisher is $20, they have a few options. If they are greedy, they will sell it for $30, and thus people who buy the downloadable version will pay $10 extra for no real reason. If they are generous, they will sell it for $20, and will suffer a loss from every DVD sold, but the downloadable price will be fair. Or they can do a mix of that and sell it for $25, hoping that the loss from DVD sales offsets the surplus they gain from downloadable sales. Or, as mentioned before, they could sell it for a different price, but in that case local shops will not be pleased.
I am sorry to tell you that, but words "greedy", "no real reason", "generous", "fair" have nothing to do with business decisions, including pricing strategies for different distribution channels.
1. Trusting online services.
2. Keeping the installer in local storage.
3. Keeping the installer in local storage.

There is no functional difference between the last two. They share the same advantages and disadvantages.
I always prefer factory-made DVD over self-made DVD-ROM or HDD-image for being more reliable and cheaper at the same time. I am sure I wrote it earlier.
And in my case, they offer a plenty. The thing is that what you find meaningful is not what I find meaningful. There are plenty of people who are content with what GOG.com offers. It's all a matter of opinion.
No, it's a matter of numbers. How many new games are released on GOG? 1 in 20? 1 in 50? You convince yourself that that 1 game is the only thing you need and that is why GOG represents 100% of gaming industry?
By all means, point me to it. And point the Free Software Foundation to it, too - after all, they must be wrong about this, right?
(Un)fortunately, they are. Otherwise they would have had a lot of loud victories in courts all over the world. But this is not the case.

And I don't care if they want to continue to enjoy their delusions, that's why I don't plan to make a comparative study of IP laws all over the world. I know IP laws of several countries around my own, and they are very similar. And they were all based on European laws.

And frankly, I strongly doubt that FSF's message is really "IP does not exist". Too stupid to be true.
Well, at least these two posts clarified what you are trying to say - that physical DVD copies are good. Well, good to know. Because previously that wasn't clear to me.
Choice is good. Industrial production is good (except in art).
Artisan production is bad (except in art, again). Legal uncertainty is bad. Depending on unstable emerging companies in emerging industry is bad.
Is it all news for you?
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MMX Release Date

Unread postby hellegennes » 07 Apr 2013, 11:48

@Dalai:



It feels as if you are reading and commenting on different things. For example:



"Cue Heroes 6 was priced at no less than $60 on all local shops in my hometown. Currently, Heroes VI complete is priced at $55 at all local shops."



And your response is:



"And in 10 years it will cost 0.99$. What kind of argument is that?"



I am not talking about price reduction with time, here. I am talking about two different releases. The first one is the original H6 release and the second one is the H6 complete, which will be released in a few months. This is not a comparison between the two but an idea of how much they cost in physical format. In downloadable format, they cost much less (as low as 1/3 of the physical copy price).



Regarding DVD copies, a home-made copy is as good as a factory-made one. There's no real difference. Nor are DVD writers unreliable. You may happen to have personal experience from two such drives, but I've been dealing with DVD writers for a number of years and never did I encounter a serious problem with any of these (I've worked as a computer engineer for more than 12 years).



Again there is misunderstanding of my wording, here:



"You jump from 5 to 10 minutes inside 1 paragraph"



No, I don't. Read again. 5 mins is the max time for writing the DVD copy; 10 mins is referred to as the time needed to download the copy and burn it. Now, the download itself may take much more time, but you don't need to be there. Your needed actions account to no more than 10 mins. Clicking on a link and looking at your free space takes no more than seconds on any OS. In fact, 19 mins is an overestimation.



Mail order is not always an option. In fact, most of the time it's not an option. But even if it is, there is the added shipment cost.



To sum up, the initial DVD copying at a factory may be somewhat cheaper, but it comes with a host of added costs and the result is that making your own copy is much much cheaper and as reliable as the factory-made one.-

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Re: MMX Release Date

Unread postby Dalai » 07 Apr 2013, 12:46

hellegennes wrote:I am not talking about price reduction with time, here. I am talking about two different releases. The first one is the original H6 release and the second one is the H6 complete, which will be released in a few months. This is not a comparison between the two but an idea of how much they cost in physical format. In downloadable format, they cost much less (as low as 1/3 of the physical copy price).
They cost 1/3 of physical copy now. Was it the case when H6 was released? Or is it another argument to GreatEmerald's quote (who is "actually in agreement" with you):
prices in brick-and-mortar stores are usually the same as the prices of a download. Because the brick-and-mortar stores ask the publishers to set the prices such, or else nobody would ever buy from them. So to offset that, the publishers artificially increase the price of the digital download.
I still think you do have something to discuss.
Regarding DVD copies, a home-made copy is as good as a factory-made one. There's no real difference.
No, it's not. The difference is huge. Simple google search results in many comparisons, for example:
"DVDs are read by a laser, so they never wear out from being played since nothing touches the disc. Pressed discs (the kind that movies come on) will probably last longer than you will, anywhere from 50 to 300 years.

Expected longevity of dye-based DVD-R and DVD+R discs is anywhere from 20 to 250 years, about as long as CD-R discs. Some dye formulations (such as phthalocyanine and azo) are more stable and are expected to last longer, 100 years or more, compared to 20 or 30 years for less stable dyes. The phase-change erasable formats (DVD-RAM, DVD-RW, and DVD+RW) have an expected lifetime of 25 to 100 years.
"
Difference between 50 and 20 years, if we take lower estimates, is 2.5 times. Hardly "no real difference". As an engineer, you should at least try to understand technology, and difference instantly becomes obvious.
Nor are DVD writers unreliable. You may happen to have personal experience from two such drives, but I've been dealing with DVD writers for a number of years and never did I encounter a serious problem with any of these (I've worked as a computer engineer for more than 12 years).
I find it very hard to believe. As an engineer you may know that reading and writing subsystems are different and sometimes even independent, and writing is much finer process, and as such it is more prone to failure. I wrote about two drives I personally own, it doesn't mean that they represent my whole experience.

I think if you take 5 drives older than 4-5 years, at least 3 of them will not be able to burn DVD and verify it, and all 5 of them will be able to read a good DVD. Want to try?
Mail order is not always an option. In fact, most of the time it's not an option. But even if it is, there is the added shipment cost.
Finally we came to something. The right way would be to optimize production and shipment so that customers can receive the benefit of industrial production with no excessive cost. The only companies that could do it are big publishers. There are different approaches to that. They can go Amazon path, they can try to renegotiate a deal with retail stores. Now, after retail lost almost 100% of this type of revenue, they would be much more likely to listen to common sense.

But it's way easier for publisher to unload all the risks to customer, and add some cover-story about evil retail and progress.
To sum up, the initial DVD copying at a factory may be somewhat cheaper, but it comes with a host of added costs and the result is that making your own copy is much much cheaper and as reliable as the factory-made one.-
"Somewhat" means "several times" and with much more reliable result - see above. Fighting excessive cost is a much better way to go than just unloading their problems on customer.

And a s result - digital distribution is not "just cheaper". It's completely different thing, with other set of risks, costs and benefits. Which was my point from the very beginning.
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MMX Release Date

Unread postby hellegennes » 07 Apr 2013, 14:37

I don't disagree with GE on that matter. The prices are USUALLY about the same, but still differ in most cases and it also depends on the country of purchase. Prices change when the product has to be exported and travel great distances. Hence, games published in the US have more or less the same price for both formats but the price gets bigger as the games are distributed outside the US.



If I'm not mistaken, the downloadable release of H6 was about $40 when it came out, which was about 2/3 of the local asking price ($60). So even back then the price was a lot different, I'm not just talking about what it is now.



Again, regarding DVDs, never did I say that reading and writing are the same but that changes nothing. DVD writing is pretty reliable. Yes, if you want to burn thousands of copies, I guess it will eventually fail, but that's not casual use. Even if you burn a 100 copies per year, it should work fine for more than 5 years.



Also, you use the life estimation of DVDs in a wrong fashion. You can't compare lower or max estimates, you should compare the averages, because that's what you're more likely to encounter. These are, according to your source, 175 and 135 respectively, which is hardly a large difference and it's not a real difference considering you won't live as long. The mean lifetime is probably even larger. Also, this is hardly a concern, even if you are so unlucky as to fall in the lower estimate of 20 years. 20 years ago you would use floppies for the same thing, so it's pretty unlikely that you'll be needing your DVDs 20 years from now.



Finally, estimations of this kind usually imply a 95-97% chance that you are likely to encounter the estimated range; it can fall outside these limits, too. Granted that bell curves are used for the estimation, it's still pretty unlikely for your DVD to last less than 40 years, no matter how it was written.


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