http://wccftech.com/sony-bans-resale-renting-playstation-games-software-usage-terms/
Well, there goes everything they said. They just wanted pre-orders before it was too late, and they announced their *real* plans just now before anyone has the chance to do anything about it and before any press can come out about it.
Well played, Sony. Except that now they've handed their brand's *ss on a silver platter to Microsoft. It seems that in the end, if you're a console gamer, you're just X-boned for Christmas regardless of which console you pick.
Oh well, all the brownie points Sony picked up for being pro-consumer have now been revoked. As a PC gamer, I'm perfectly content to stand by and watch console companies shoot each other with bad press, smear campaigns, enough hypocrisy to make Dick Cheney blush.
So it seems the PC Master Race will live on... (where art thou, SteamOS?)
Well, at least there seems to be some places where we can still get great games that are DRM free, and that we actually own. (Why hello there GOG.com, haven't seen you in a while.)
Well, it will probably apply to the US soon.
Also worth noting is that in the Destructoid article you linked, you'll find that Steam doesn't allow you to sell or give your games to friends either. So now the PS4 isn't likely to give you that option either.
Sony quickly replied that this will NOT impact your ability to share or trade games. It was just legal they had to update to cover their butts when it comes to likely copy protection issues, pirating, etc.
Hhmmm. Well, I hope so.
But I think that Sony could have worded it a bit better, so it didn't sound like complete backtracking. Sony should learn to be less ambiguous in it's wording; the objective of communication is to avoid miscommunication and misinterpretations, since language was developed to let others know precisely what you mean.
Although being concise may be good, there's no point to being concise if you're vague, ambiguous, imprecise and/or misleading. (Do you have a link to your info about Sony clarifying this issue?)
The easiest I could find.
Thanks. =)
Seems some of this is pretty good, because now if someone is abusing the online play capabilities of the PS4, they can now be banned from the game and possibly the PlayStation network. Either the account and/or device could be banned, meaning we might now see a better community if we have people good at reporting people who abuse the game.
“Your use of PSN and our community features may be recorded and collected by us or sent to us by other users as described in 13.1. Any information collected in this way, for example, your UGM, the content of your voice and text communications, video of your gameplay, the time and location of your activities, and your name, your PSN Online ID and IP address, may be used by us or our affiliated companies to enforce these Terms and the SEN Terms of Service, to comply with the law, to protect our rights and those of our licensors and users, and to protect the personal safety of our employees and users.
“This information may be passed to the police or other appropriate authorities. By accepting these Software Usage Terms, you expressly consent to this.”
This means that people calling other people derogatory terms or racial slurs while playing CoD can now be banned from playing on their console, and/or may have their account banned (and possibly have their games licenses revoked, meaning they lose the games they bought).
I see a very big Ban Hammer here. But I'm also suspicious as to what this might mean for online privacy, and if this new TOS may have anything to do with the CIA and/or NSA. (But no points for guessing the type of metal foil headgear I'm wearing while saying this. =P Unless of course the NSA and/or CIA have a history of doing this kind of thing in the past...)
No, I think you were right with your Ban Hammer concept. ;-)
“Your use of PSN and our community features may be recorded and collected by us or sent to us by other users as described in 13.1. Any information collected in this way, for example, your UGM, the content of your voice and text communications, video of your gameplay, the time and location of your activities, and your name, your PSN Online ID and IP address, may be used by us or our affiliated companies to enforce these Terms and the SEN Terms of Service, to comply with the law, to protect our rights and those of our licensors and users, and to protect the personal safety of our employees and users.
“This (AKA the information they collect) information may be passed to the police or other appropriate authorities. By accepting these Software Usage Terms, you expressly consent to this.”
This censorship is probably not a good idea, its a slippery slope and next they will be banning people for saying politically incorrect things. The way this is done on computer gaming (by owner-operated and administered dedicated servers) is much better, if games cant be traded or reused that means that when you get banned (from everything) for saying something sony doesn't like, it means you would lose your entire game cataloge, your gaming machine, and whatever remained of your subscription. You could try and compare this too steam (which has a similar sort of risk), but the difference there is that they don't go into the servers, monitor my in-game communications and decide based on whether they approve of what I say to ban me...
And what happens when the device is shared by multiple people, I.e. in a family environment, or friends come over or something and do something somewhere and it just gets the account and everything banned.
That's just Sony's way of protecting themselves. A similar statement can be found in almost every EULA.
They aren't going to follow every single person around and listen to every word they say, and If you say "terrorist" or something, that you would get banned for it.
And if you let someone else onto your account, and they get it banned, it's just like any other service, if you let friends or family get on an Xbox live account, and it gets banned, then it's the same thing. That's how it has always been.
Bleh I want to just close every console thread that opens with special metal hat comments