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Games Government Entertainment Politics

Manhunt 2 Could Beat Ban With Digital Download 59

Posted by Zonk from the sneaky-like-that dept.
GamePolitics notes that the Register has a theory as to how Rockstar can get around Britain's Manhunt 2 ban: make it available as a digital download. "Downloaded games ... do not need an age-suitability classification, such as 15 or 18, because the Act, which mandates the BBFC's certification programme and forces retailers to obey the classifications, only covers physical products. A BBFC spokeswoman confirmed that if Manhunt 2 publisher Take-Two Interactive chose to sell the game online as a download then 'that would be legal and not contravening the Video Recordings Act'. She added that some games are already sold this way without a BBFC rating, but that most developers choose to have their games classified because selling a physical product is more profitable."
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Manhunt 2 Could Beat Ban With Digital Download More

Manhunt 2 Could Beat Ban With Digital Download

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  • Physical Product More Profitable? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Nos. ( 179609 ) <andrew@nOSPAm.thekerrs.ca> on Thursday October 25, 2007 @01:14PM (#21116893) Homepage
    I don't really see how a physical product would be more profitable. Look at Valve with Steam. They pushed to get online distribution going, and (for the most part) have made their customers very happy. I love the convenience of purchasing my game online and downloading it prior to its official release. Not only that, but they save money by not producing (as many) cds, manuals, boxes, etc. I'm not sure how distribution costs would compare, since there still would be some.

    • Re:Physical Product More Profitable? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Reason58 ( 775044 ) on Thursday October 25, 2007 @01:27PM (#21117087)
      It's simple. The overwhelming majority of video game purchases aren't made by hardcore gamers (Madden 1990-2027 anyone?). Casual gamers or parents think that Steam is what happens to water. The EB, however, is a physical place they can see every time they go to the mall.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Ambiguous Coward ( 205751 )
        I am not a hard-core gamer. I play games once in a while, I go to a friend's house some weekends and use one of his computers to play games. When I do actually buy a game, I play it pretty hard for a couple few days, then I lose interest and wander off. I have no idea what the current hot new releases are, or what have you. I just don't pay attention or care.

        Here's the thing: because I'm just not that interested, I don't go to the local EB at the mall. The physical boxes there have *no* presence in my life.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Endo13 ( 1000782 )
          The GP used "hardcore gamers" a bit incorrectly (I think he meant something more like a hardcore geek) but his point is valid. Most video games purchases are not by people who know a lot about PCs and download things like Steam. Most are by teens/college kids who like to hang out with their friends (often this includes trips to the local shopping mall) and parents who's kids pester them until they give in. Now, if Valve wanted to throw a lot of money into the works and have Steam installed on all the home P

          • Now, if Valve wanted to throw a lot of money into the works and have Steam installed on all the home PCs sold by say Dell and HP with an icon plastered on the desktop...
            Holy crap, don't say that too loud. That's a dangerously good idea. :P

            -G
      • Here at EBGames the Orange Box is $99, on Steam it is $49, the choice is fairly obvious, if parents wise up, they save money, money makes people wise up, most of the time.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by kc2keo ( 694222 )
      Agreed. I am very satisfied with Steams progress with the on-line content distribution method. Very convenient for me as a consumer and cost cutting for the company. You can also buy other non-steam games and even launch non-steam games though steam. Eventually I predict game sales on-line will keep on growing and the physical box sales will diminish until it stops.

      I used to be pretty sceptical about buying the game on-line without getting a physical box, manual and game media. Now I just burn the cont

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by 0xygen ( 595606 )
        Steam is great... but if it saves so many costs, why in the UK is it still 3 or 4 GBP more expensive than a physical copy of the same game bought online?

        Incidentally, the online-bought physical copy conveniently arrives by post at my house the day before it is available on Steam for most titles!
        I see it is "cute" to have all the Valve games available in Steam, but the premium for having them there is wearing thin.

        Incidentally - the Orange Box "gifts" sucked too. Everyone I know with a brain and desire to pl

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by kc2keo ( 694222 )
          Well, I guess for some the service is inconvenient and pricey. Personally I opted out of buying the Orange box package. Instead I purchased what I wanted separately. So far I bought HL2 EP2. Later I may purchase TF2 and Portal. Also, what are these "gifts" you talk about?
          • If you bought the Orange Box and already had HL2 and HL2-EP1, you got a "gift" of each one of them, meaning you could permanently give a copy to someone else.

        • I realize that I'm clearly the exception to the rule here, but I'd just never gotten around to buying Half-Life 2 when it was new, and then just never thought of it when about to buy a game.

          However, the desire to essentially play Portal alone made me buy the Orange Box. I'm sure I got lured in by the promise of "5 games for the price of one", but now I've beaten Portal, and I'm finally getting my late start on Half-Life 2 and an enduring love of the gravity gun.

          Also, I'm not sure what the situation is in

          • I'm not sure why Steam wouldn't try to always beat retail prices, since it's got to cost less when you cut out all the overhead of packaging, shipping and stocking. I suppose their distribution deals with other publishers prevents them from doing this with games they don't own, and maybe Valve just wants to maximize their profits from their own games. That probably combines with the tendency of content providers to like to overcharge certain regions to make comparatively bad prices in non-US areas.

            Accurate

            • Actually, their newer games, and I think all the way back to HL2 and maybe before, Valve is both the developer and the publisher (at least this is how they list themselves). Vivendi Universal used to be their distributor, but after a bit of a legal battle centered around Steam, Valve dropped VU Games around 2005, and EA now does distribution for Valve games. Sierra (as a subsidiary of Vivendi) hasn't been associated with the games at all since HL2. New box art only shows the Valve logo.

              Of course, your p

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by 0xygen ( 595606 )
            Yeah, this is my problem with the reward scheme at the end of the day. It did not reward long term Half Life fans, it just gave them the finger.

            Had I been a new purchaser to the series, I would have felt I was getting a better deal.

            Plus, as you mention, the "360 tax" is pretty evil, but I guess Microsoft need their cut, and a lot of gamers are happy to pay for the achievment points. I bought on PC through Steam though, even as a happy 360 user. TF2 Beta access was not worth it though!
      • The thing to remember is that for a game publisher, physical copies are more profitable than downloads. Why? Well yes, theres the initial cost of packaging and whanot, but think of it this way: Target, Walmart, Best Buy, all the stores that sell video games buy a ton of the copies of these games. So, the game publisher will sell, from day one the publisher will sell hundreds of thousands if not millions of games worldwide. If the end store doesn't sell many copies, thats their problem, by that time the pub

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by kc2keo ( 694222 )

          So your saying that if the publisher is selling physical copies to the end store the publisher gets all the money anyway because the end store pays for lots of copies? If its download only then the publisher only can rely on people purchase->downloading the game?

          You are aware that you can make a CD/DVD of the content you download right? For example... I bought BF2 AF (Armor Fury) and EF (Euro Forces) through EAs download system (like steam but it sucks). The content downloaded and I installed them.

    • I don't really see how a physical product would be more profitable.

      If your product is bigger than about 16 MB, and your users have dial-up, then the effective price of your product to the end user includes the price of upgrading from dial-up to broadband. Does a broadband subscription in the United Kingdom come with a 12-month commitment, or is it month-to-month? (How would I phrase a Google query to answer that question?)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by daeg ( 828071 )
        When looking at $0 profit for failing to be able to sell in game shops or $XXX profit for selling online, there is only one obvious choice.

        They could always purchase from overseas, too, if they must.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by G Fab ( 1142219 )
          but they can sell it in shops. They're about to. They had to modify the game, but 0 profit was never a true possibility.

          And selling in shops makesm ore sense. I can browse through a store (we have many systems, so I can browse through the whole store), and I'm having fun and looking at the cool boxart, etc. I buy something, and if I forget I had it, I might trip over it five years later. I'm getting a hell of a lot for my money.

          I stopped playing Warhawk, but I'm sure in five years I will give it anothe

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Tim C ( 15259 )
        Does a broadband subscription in the United Kingdom come with a 12-month commitment, or is it month-to-month?

        Both are available, depending on the ISP and the service plan you choose.

    • I don't really see how a physical product would be more profitable. Look at Valve with Steam. They pushed to get online distribution going, and (for the most part) have made their customers very happy. I love the convenience of purchasing my game online and downloading it prior to its official release. Not only that, but they save money by not producing (as many) cds, manuals, boxes, etc. I'm not sure how distribution costs would compare, since there still would be some.

      Of course, if steam were to go out of business, you'd lose access to those games.. I believe they require a server authentication to make them work, correct?

      The problem with downloadable games is usually that once you download them, if you erase them for some reason, you need to re-download them. That sucks. Same problem with DRM music.. I'd rather own the physical media, thank you very much. Although, that's becoming a problem too.. (ie, bioshock and its DRM)

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Nos. ( 179609 )
        Nope. You can play the games in "Offline" mode, so no need to authenticate with any central resource. Valve has also stated on numerous occasions, that in the event they were to go out of business, they would patch existing games to no longer authenticate to a master server at all. Apparently its even been tested to some degree.

        • Nope.

          You can play the games in "Offline" mode, so no need to authenticate with any central resource. Valve has also stated on numerous occasions, that in the event they were to go out of business, they would patch existing games to no longer authenticate to a master server at all. Apparently its even been tested to some degree.

          We don't have enough money to stay in business, but we'll go ahead and put out a patch to drop authentication? Yeah, I'll believe that one when I see it...

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Endo13 ( 1000782 )

        Of course, if steam were to go out of business, you'd lose access to those games.. I believe they require a server authentication to make them work, correct?
        No, I don't believe so. I haven't used Steam in a while, but if memory serves the only thing you couldn't do if Steam went belly-up is reinstall the games you bought from them online, as well as download updates for games you purchased on disks.
        • Actually, starting with HL2, you had to verify your CD/DVD-based product via the Steam servers which then kindly "updated" your product. Steam is definitely more profitable for Valve than the costs of production, distribution and advertising. It also reduces the likelyhood of being screwed over by the production company *points insane monkey finger at Vivendi Universal*

    • Tough on the Wii (Score:3, Insightful)

      by mckwant ( 65143 )
      For systems with hard drives (of whatever capacity), it's a fine idea. The Wii doesn't have a hard drive, just 512M of internal flash ram.

      Probably ok for casual/flash-type games, likely less so for full blown titles. Nintendo's obviously going to have to figure something out here, as the industry is obviously moving to downloads for the exact reasons you mention.

      (plus, they get to keep the retailer's profit)

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by skiingyac ( 262641 )

        Nintendo's obviously going to have to figure something out here, as the industry is obviously moving to downloads for the exact reasons you mention.
        For example, they should include a USB port so that you can attach a USB hard drive to store your games?
        • The Nintendo Wii already has a USB port, two in fact. They are on the back, near the top. Not sure if it is possible to attach a USB external hard drive or flash drive - but with sufficient support it is not unlikely that Nintendo will implement such a feature (like the overwhelming push to add USB keyboard support).

          It should also be noted that the Wii already has the capability to upgrade physical memory, via the SD card ports on the front. These are not too expensive, though admittedly more pricey than ha
          • and considering how nintendo added USB keyboard support with a simple update, I don't see why nintendo is behind except that they've not added USB hdd support yet because they don't need it yet.

            no sarcasm in this post, don't want you to miss it again. :)
    • I don't really see how a physical product would be more profitable

      Broadband penetration in the states is only around 45%.

      I would not be surprised to hear that the percentage is even lower among those who are console gamers only. Wii gamers only.

      How much does it cost to ship the Orange Box on palletes to Walmart?

      Outsource the packaging. Include an action figure, a strategy guide in paperback. Be damn sure the "Game of the Year Edition" is in the stores in time for Christmas. Price it at $60 list.

    • It's primarily a console game so sales would suffer if it were made download only.

      Personally, I suspect that Rockstar have the cut version of the game sitting on their HDs ready for release. They've probably got a graph on their office wall with a red line that rises up gradually, peaks and then starts to fall again. The line is a "hype plot" and the peak is the point at which they can't possibly get any more free publicity out of the situation and at which they will release the game.

      Slashdot are playing al

  • Could work well... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by meringuoid ( 568297 ) on Thursday October 25, 2007 @01:18PM (#21116979)
    ... Enough people have broadband now, and there's a certain cachet in downloading The Game They Tried To Ban! and doing an end-run around the censorship laws. Since the making of the game is a sunk cost, and since it's clear the BBFC aren't going to pass it even with the cuts, then anything they can get out of Britain is a bonus.

    Reminds me of Carmageddon. It was banned in a similar way - but a version with all the pedestrians replaced with green-blooded zombies was passed. Then the makers put a patch online that restored the original gore. Since most people weren't online at the time, every PC gaming magazine in the country put the patch on their cover discs every month for the rest of the year ;-)

    • A download would work well, but I prefer to have something in my paws that I could justify spending the cash on. Now, if Rockstar could set up a patch to restore the gore in the disc and keep a record of that, then that would work wonderfully. Of course, this could be circumvented, but then it would be the parents' fault for not locking down the Xbox/PS3 properly. Of course, this could also be rectified by making it available online to purchase via credit card, hence making the card holder liable (and ho
    • The BBFC would pass Manhunt, if Rockstar had the sense to stop pushing it, and make the required cuts.
      • Why should Rockstar give in to the pressure? Why can't they release a game for adults in the first place? Why do they have to be censored?

        • Why should Rockstar give in to the pressure? Why can't they release a game for adults in the first place? Why do they have to be censored?

          Do adults actually want to play something so gratuitously violent, gory and nasty?

          • I do, and I'm an adult living in Britain.

            So again, why should I be denied the ability to subject myself this 'gory and nasty' game?

            Give it 10 years - it'll look like Wolfenstein.

  • Analog (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 25, 2007 @01:21PM (#21117011)
    Any reason a digital download would be legal/ok but analog wouldn't?

    • Any reason a digital download would be legal/ok but analog wouldn't?

      Because analog is lossy, and thus technicially impossible. So not worth considering.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by VTMarik ( 880085 )
      Quite probably because it's being "sold" over the Internet to people with the ability to do so (credit cards and the like) and those people would be predominately over 18.

      Also the idea of blocking the game in retail stores is so kids won't see/buy/have their parents buy it, if I'm understanding the idiot logic correctly.
    • This is US-centric, but what it boils down to is that the game isn't banned if it receives that high of a rating, it's just that you can't buy the games anywhere except maybe a porn shop. If the title isn't available at wal mart, it might as well not exist for most people, so it's a huge hit to the income and results in an informal ban. Since download services like steam are becoming more popular, and they don't need to worry so much about carrying adult oriented titles, they can offer the game. Also, I rea

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Psychor ( 603391 )
      Because digital data is made of 0s and 1s and no violence exists between the peaceful people of Zeropia and the Onezonites. As such it escapes being rated.
  • What would be nice to see happen is Manhunt 2 be released over steam, i wonder if Rockstar would consider going into such an agreement with Valve. Manhunt 2 would be on the front page, and it would be an "in your face" to the guys who rate games.
  • Consoles require games to be rated. Stores only sell rated games. If Rockstar absolutely want to release something that is unratable, they should produce a PC version and sell it online. Otherwise the reality is that they were utterly stupid to have even bothered making this game in the first place.

  • take your losses and move on (Score:3, Funny)

    by westlake ( 615356 ) on Thursday October 25, 2007 @02:54PM (#21118253)
    the Register has a theory as to how Rockstar can get around Britain's Manhunt 2 ban

    How long will it be before Parliament closes this particular window of opportunity?

    Manhunt 2 brings the torture porn genre to the video game console. The player taking the role of the psycho killer. The game play graphic disembowelment mimed with the Wii controller.

    Manhunt 2 invites the kind of ferocious backlash that has Take-Two's financial backers reaching for their Zantac whenever they see Rockstar in the news.

    The question is, why do they need the grief? Bioshock is doing just fine, thank you.

    • Manhunt 2 invites the kind of ferocious backlash that has Take-Two's financial backers reaching for their Zantac whenever they see Rockstar in the news.

      Only if buckets of money give them heartburn. Rockstar is one of the most critically loved and successful studios around right now. Controversy plays right into their hands because the games are legitimately good, so when someone starts talking about one of their games it always turns good at some point and makes people want to play their games. The controversy isn't for everyone, but if you don't like controversy you shouldn't be backing Rockstar or their publishers. If you don't mind the controversy, the

      • Only if buckets of money give them heartburn.

        Hot Coffee did not translate into buckets of money for Take-Two.

        Bioshock is by any reasonable standard an adult game.

        It has the potential to evolve into a very successful franchise. But with none of the liabilities that come with Manhunt 2.

        Rockstar's PR went into overdrive to emphasize the player's emotional and physical engagement with his role as the psycho killer. The gross-out sadism of the Wii controller kills. This did not help its cause.

        Manhunt 2 bega

  • This sounds good, but we're talking about a PS2 and Wii game released as a PC title? I can see the sea of posts about terrible graphics already.
  • Their Postal franchise has been banned in several countries (11 for the first Postal, at least 2 for the second), and they've offered downloadable copies of the game since '05, I believe.
  • Glad to see the Register is right on the spot reporting a possibility that most every game site that talked about when the Manhunt 2's ratings problems (PR stunt) began.
  • See? They obviously read /. and took my advice!

    http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=256221&cid=20006555 [slashdot.org]

    Despite my prognosticative prowess, I don't have a crystal ball; I've always walked like this.

  • This is a Wii and PS2 game, not a PC Game. Nintendo and Sony approve the games that are released on there consoles, download or not. I highly doubt either would allow this to be downloaded (can you even download a game this big on Wii?) if it was banned by various governments that it wants to stay on the good side of.

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