Digital Game Recycling System

[Infyrin]

Hey everybody, first time viewer here but a regular viewer of content produced by Ross.

I'd like to talk to you a bit about an idea I've had involving games and the digital marketplace. I think it shares the common vein as when GaaS games decide to die on us because the developer or publisher sees it unfit to stop supporting it. Well, there are times when players and consumers who buy digital copies of games that make impulse purchases and the sort. The game becomes dead to us and we're stuck with it - technically forever. Until you know, something hiccups in Valve's Steam ecosystem and we just lose the access to the game.

If that's a bad analogy - I'm sorry.

I'm not a fan of the system in place that Valve has in 'deleting' games, because it's not permanent. You can resurrect games and unhide games from hiding them. What if we take it a step further and recycle them? I had an economic idea about this where if you wanted, you can redeem a game for a low sum of $1 ~ $5 depending on the game. But I realized it'd be a catastrophic exploit, so I've decided to drop it and think of the more approachable alternative.

This alternative consists of you revoking all accessibility, achievement cleansed and your account's ties to a game purged. All for the purpose of repackaging a game to turn it into a gift. Maybe to someone who can and has the time to play that game that might want it. Maybe to that friend who can't afford that game and is morally confused on pirating it. Something generous and a kind act to do.

Now, I do know there is an exploit in this. That exploit being - if people are going to repackage games all the time for gifts, then with the millions of users, the exchanges would be so wild that nobody would be buying games. While this is indeed a valid argument, I've got a minor counterargument and an idea. An idea I don't think a lot of people may like.

 

You see, there would be a limit or a regulatory system in place to keep track of the recycling. You could only do this with friends. Furthermore, you are on a cooldown timer from buying that game for upwards of a month's length. Because after all, we have to prevent exploits and people will surely be finding ways to abuse these systems.

I'm totally open to hearing expansive ideas or maybe better executed ideas. This idea as a whole has been rattling in my mind for a couple years. It sounds simple, but I think we could use a GameStop version of turning in digital games. Just not with GameStop's poor functionality or system.

[Infyrin]

10 hours ago, RaTcHeT302 said:

no it doesn't make any sense, it's digital, you can't recycle computer data, you can't recycle something which doesn't exist

 

this is just a made up system, it would never make any sense, how about we just, stop killing off games for no reason?

 

just be more responsible with your purchases or just pirate the damn game and buy it later if you like it, plus piracy is good for everyone involved, if someone buys the game and if they hate it, they leave a negative review, if they pirate the game and if they hate it, they just delete it

 

so not only does piracy dodge the bad publicity, but you give people less reasons to complain in public, and you get to stick to your own niche

 

by adding bullshit drm on the other hand, you basically leave me with no other choices

 

so if we had some "rent" or "recycling" system, then, we'd have even more DRM up the ass

 

this sounds like a nightmare waiting to happen, i'll pass

 

if it was up to me, we'd have an honor system, where you get to trial every game for two hours for free, but of course people are going to abuse that

or the other system, WHERE WE GIVE PEOPLE MORE MONEY, SO THAT BUYING A GAME, ISN'T A CRIPPLING LIFE CHOICE

 

i feel like society forces people to be stingy with something they shouldn't have to be stingy at all, so i dunno, i don't see how another weird system would help deal with our other weird systems

 

again, just pirate the damn game and buy it if you like it, nobody is getting hurt if you do this, i don't care if this is "illegal", i bought games with the worst piece of shit drm on the planet, and now i can't play them, and WHAT DO YOU KNOW, I HAVE TO PIRATE THEM NOW

 

or the worst ones, WHERE I GET SOME PIECE OF SHIT UPDATE, I NEVER ASKED FOR, AND IF IT WASN'T FOR THE CRACKED COPIES, I WOULD BE SCREWED

 

piracy is something i really don't feel too bad about doing, our broke ass society sucks anyway, plus people act like pirating movies is normal anyway, like you are looked at as an idiot if you don't, where i live at least, but again i'm going for the honor system, if i like the game i'll just buy it later when i can, i'm not some giant douchebag who plays games for free, but there are tons of games i want to check out, and i'd be bankrupt if i bought every shitty game, or i would die of old age if i waited forever for these games to go on sale

 

also immagine if someone broke into your steam account, and turned some of your games into gifts, that's garbage

 

Are you like the resident edgy boomerlord here or something?

[Plegyvap]

I like the idea in principle since it makes digitally purchased games behave more like real property but I think it would be more effective to spend the energy on keeping games from being removed from store.

 

One could also argue that it could become common for people to exchange single player games once they are finished with them. You could make a dedicated forum or something and temporarily befriend people to trade. That would drop sales of games, mainly the older ones (mostly single player and many people already own them), that leads to less earnings which are probably already low thanks to generous sales and thus there could be less incentive to rerelease old games with compatibility for new systems.
You could regulate that by limiting exchanges to once per week or month but that would lessen the impact of this new benefit. Also both developers/publishers and store owners don't receive anything from this so it will be hard to convince them.

[rairii]

On 11/13/2020 at 4:05 PM, Infyrin said:

Are you like the resident edgy boomerlord here or something?

I'm assuming his response was deleted by a mod or something, but yes, he's a little unhinged.

[Im_CIA]

No AM would ever agree to this.