19th June 2013, 1:59 PM
http://news.xbox.com/2013/06/update
Very interesting... I thought that MS would just weather the storm and hope that people bought XO systems anyway, but I guess that they've decided that the degree of hatred is too much, and they have to give up. So, they are. The 24-hour check is gone. Disc-based games will now require the disc to run, so no playing disc-based games without the disc in the drive (that'll be the DRM, instead of 24-hour checks to see if you've traded or sold back games).
However, also gone is that "Family share plan" that they'd been pushing. No sharing without sharing actual discs, and no sharing at all with downloadable titles; those are now locked to your account only. Speculation that publishers were less than pleased with the "family share plan" option might be accurate, who knows... apparently it would have allowed any 10 people to form a "family". Then anyone in that group could play any game any of them bought, anywhere, without needing a disc (just download it). The only restriction was that only the purchaser and one other person could play each game at any time. Still though, that was a pretty interesting option... maybe publishers thought that it was too generous. I mean, keeping the family share thing for digital-only purchases (though not also disc games of course, there'd be no way to do that with disc games without requiring installs that are locked to your account, requiring an online connection, and getting rid of used games, as they were planning on doing) certainly could still fit in this new, current-gen style of the DRM. That they're getting rid of it says something.
Overall though, this is very interesting news... it looks like the massive popular outcry worked! Losing the family share thing is too bad, but if publishers didn't like it, maybe it was doomed anyway. And losing the required 24-hour online DRM checkin is fantastic; sure most systems will be online most of the time, but that's not true everywhere, and it's a very blatant attempt at going for corporate profits and awful anti-consumer, "you own nothing you thought you bought" stuff. There's no reason for that check except because of corporate paranoia about piracy and used games, after all.
What would be the best system? Well, that digital games can't be resold, not even back to Microsoft or Sony, on their next consoles is horrible. I very badly hope that the EU's attempts to force some kind of resale into digital sales of software works, and MS and Sony are both forced to give in on this point. Resale of digital games is a right that must be won. I think this whole XO debacle shows that people still care about ownership of physical goods. PC gamers did give up a bit too much there, sadly, but maybe that can be won back as well... ownership is a right that we must defend. "It's a temporary license only and not a purchase" is not okay.
For physical games though, allowing resale with a disc check is a reasonable compromise. PC games abandoned that over the course of the last generation in favor of one-time-use keys for most titles, which is unfortunate. PC gaming never had the kind of used-games culture that console gaming did, so losing a lot of what used games marketplace the PC had didn't make nearly the same level of impact, but still, it's unfortunate. Of course on the PC worries about losing games forever aren't nearly as bad, since everything can be pirated, but legal resale should be an option as well. There is some evidence that Steam might actually add some variant of that "family share plan" in the future (though with MS abandoning it, we'll see), but still no sign of resale. What you should be able to do is to sell the game back or to a digital trading store or what have you, or alternately "un-register" the key you used so that if you then sell the physical copy whoever buys it can then use that key. Pirates can get around any of that DRM anyway, so there's no use in worrying about whether that'd enable more copying; anyone who wants to can do that already anyway. This wouldn't really change anything much on that front.
Very interesting... I thought that MS would just weather the storm and hope that people bought XO systems anyway, but I guess that they've decided that the degree of hatred is too much, and they have to give up. So, they are. The 24-hour check is gone. Disc-based games will now require the disc to run, so no playing disc-based games without the disc in the drive (that'll be the DRM, instead of 24-hour checks to see if you've traded or sold back games).
However, also gone is that "Family share plan" that they'd been pushing. No sharing without sharing actual discs, and no sharing at all with downloadable titles; those are now locked to your account only. Speculation that publishers were less than pleased with the "family share plan" option might be accurate, who knows... apparently it would have allowed any 10 people to form a "family". Then anyone in that group could play any game any of them bought, anywhere, without needing a disc (just download it). The only restriction was that only the purchaser and one other person could play each game at any time. Still though, that was a pretty interesting option... maybe publishers thought that it was too generous. I mean, keeping the family share thing for digital-only purchases (though not also disc games of course, there'd be no way to do that with disc games without requiring installs that are locked to your account, requiring an online connection, and getting rid of used games, as they were planning on doing) certainly could still fit in this new, current-gen style of the DRM. That they're getting rid of it says something.
Overall though, this is very interesting news... it looks like the massive popular outcry worked! Losing the family share thing is too bad, but if publishers didn't like it, maybe it was doomed anyway. And losing the required 24-hour online DRM checkin is fantastic; sure most systems will be online most of the time, but that's not true everywhere, and it's a very blatant attempt at going for corporate profits and awful anti-consumer, "you own nothing you thought you bought" stuff. There's no reason for that check except because of corporate paranoia about piracy and used games, after all.
What would be the best system? Well, that digital games can't be resold, not even back to Microsoft or Sony, on their next consoles is horrible. I very badly hope that the EU's attempts to force some kind of resale into digital sales of software works, and MS and Sony are both forced to give in on this point. Resale of digital games is a right that must be won. I think this whole XO debacle shows that people still care about ownership of physical goods. PC gamers did give up a bit too much there, sadly, but maybe that can be won back as well... ownership is a right that we must defend. "It's a temporary license only and not a purchase" is not okay.
For physical games though, allowing resale with a disc check is a reasonable compromise. PC games abandoned that over the course of the last generation in favor of one-time-use keys for most titles, which is unfortunate. PC gaming never had the kind of used-games culture that console gaming did, so losing a lot of what used games marketplace the PC had didn't make nearly the same level of impact, but still, it's unfortunate. Of course on the PC worries about losing games forever aren't nearly as bad, since everything can be pirated, but legal resale should be an option as well. There is some evidence that Steam might actually add some variant of that "family share plan" in the future (though with MS abandoning it, we'll see), but still no sign of resale. What you should be able to do is to sell the game back or to a digital trading store or what have you, or alternately "un-register" the key you used so that if you then sell the physical copy whoever buys it can then use that key. Pirates can get around any of that DRM anyway, so there's no use in worrying about whether that'd enable more copying; anyone who wants to can do that already anyway. This wouldn't really change anything much on that front.