More on installing = making a copy

 Posted by (Visited 6964 times)  Game talk  Tagged with: , , ,
Jun 232008
 

Just continuing to follow the story, and it felt interesting enough to merit its own post rather than just an addition to the comment thread.

Blizzard Responds to Amicus Brief in MDY Bot Suit | Virtually Blind | Virtual Law | Benjamin Duranske

Although it has not put the issue in quite such stark terms, Public Knowledge is essentially seeking a ruling that says that the sale of consumer software is, in most circumstances, a sale, pretty much regardless of what the agreement that comes with the software says. If the court agrees in spite of MAI and its progeny (and the ruling survives certain appeal) then U.S. copyright law would protect, among other things, making copies of purchased software in RAM in order to use the software — no matter what the “license agreement” says. Resolving this issue in favor of Public Knowledge would call into question provisions in EULAs governing nearly every virtual world and multiuser online game, as well as EULAs for other software.

Installing = making a copy

 Posted by (Visited 6723 times)  Game talk  Tagged with: ,
Jun 202008
 

An interesting issue which should have come to a court ages ago is being surfaced by the MDY v Blizzard suit.

As you know, most of the time when you do something on a computer, copies are being made. In fact, a LOT of copies are being made (see my old post on microtransactions for a more detailed analysis and historical point of view on this). In particular, installing a piece of software means getting a copy on a disk, copying it into memory, then copying it from memory onto your own disk, then reloading it into memory every time you launch it.

So, Blizzard put a copyright claim in their suit against MDY, makers of WoWglider. And a third party called Public Knowledge, which advocates for digital rights, filed an amicus brief (“friend of the court,” basically a side opinion because they feel they have a stake in the case) which argues that the copyright claim is, well, bogus.

MDY v. Blizzard Bot Suit Judge Requires Blizzard to Respond to Amicus Brief on Copyright Issues | Virtually Blind | Virtual Law | Benjamin Duranske

The issue is essentially this: Blizzard claims that when third-party programs like MDY’s Glider (which automates certain World of Warcraft tasks) load World of Warcraft software into a computer’s RAM, that “creation of a copy” violates the copyright Blizzard holds in its software.

Public Knowledge argues “that Blizzard doesn’t have a claim on copyright grounds because the right of users to make the copy for use by the computer is already guaranteed by law. […] Therefore, Blizzard cannot claim any infringement of its copyrights based upon the creation of RAM copies because the right to make those copies was never Blizzard’s to license in the first place.”

This has broad relevance outside of this one case. So it’s particularly interesting that the judge in the case has now ordered Blizzard to answer this issue specifically.

The market glut

 Posted by (Visited 18387 times)  Game talk  Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,
May 202008
 

Nielsen is saying that Club Penguin is stalling out — not much, just a -7% growth year on year from last April to this April.

Of course, with the quantity of kids’ worlds coming into the market now, this is not really surprising, is it? I mean, I was at the grocery store this weekend, and there was a rack of Beanie Babies 2.0 with giant “play online!” tags hanging on them. It may be that this is the death of “Web 2.0,” when it gets co-opted for Beanie Babies.

At left here is the rack of game cards available at Target — snapped this weekend, and strongly reminiscent, finally, of similar shots I have taken in Korea, Japan, and China. For years, there was no such rack in the US. Then it was just a couple of cards, and only at some checkouts. Now it gets a rack right between the TV box sets and the top pop albums (you can see REM’s latest CD there, abandoned on the top shelf).

Besides the cards you maybe expect to see, like Club Penguin, WoW, and Zwinky, there’s also a large stack of ’em for gPotato games (Flyff, Shot Online, etc) And Acclaim, which make their living by bringing over games from Korea. There’s WildTangent cards, and the Gaia cards are almost sold out. The diversity is interesting, as is the lack of cards for most of the core gamer MMORPGs. The strong presence of the often-marginalized Korean games is telling.

Meanwhile, I hear that Age of Conan has something like 700,000 units in the pipe for day one, which is either a business blunder or a sign of high pre-orders and pent-up demand. WoW players looking for something new to sink their teeth into?

We’re starting to see the fragmentation that can come from having so many offerings on the market. How many kids’ worlds can actually survive?

I actually think the answer is “just about all of them.” If online continues to chew through the gaming market, this rack could be the size of a Gamestop someday — one stack of cards per game, in a world where all the games try to drive alternate revenue streams regardless of platform.

Interdependent systems

 Posted by (Visited 13847 times)  Game talk  Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,
Apr 222008
 

Next Generation has an informative email from Russell Williams, the CEO of Flying Lab, giving the reasons why they are having to merge servers. It’s a great insight into the complex equation involved in estimating how many servers to have.

One of the items in particular caught my eye:

Game systems
Pirates’ gameplay is very organic, designed in such a way that the different systems feed into one another. In a PvE-only game, focusing mainly on content, this isn’t a big deal. But in Pirates of the Burning Sea we have systems that require a minimum number of players to function correctly, such as our economy, and they break other systems if they’re not working correctly (such as PvP). If we didn’t have these kinds of interdependent systems, we wouldn’t even be considering server merges.

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