| theprof00 said:
I'm sorry Happy, but the only similarity you can draw is that controlling a person's property makes MS money in the same way that a conspiratorial Sony abusing the market would make money. Yes, both cases can make money....but breathing air doesn't make me anything like a dolphin. DRM degrades the value of items while a theoretical auction house creates value for items. Say for example, I preorder a game and get a skin, but don't want the skin. I can trade this skin through the auction house, which thereby creates a profit for myself, offsetting the cost of the game. This is how auctioning creates value from digital property. DRM on the other hand, degrades value, because it creates an environment where I am paid less for my property, and must pay more for the same property. Ie, Trade in value goes down while used game price goes up. This occurs since Gamestop must recoup costs. The consumer must pay the difference because the consumer doesn't have any other options. So yes, both things make the respective companies money, but that is a tertiary significance. I'll not even get into the market manipulation conspiracy case you're trying to build, which I feel is the similarity you're trying to link, because to say that one potentially morally abhorrent monetizing thing is as bad as a definitely morally abhorrent monetizing thing is wrong. That's like saying that I shouldn't buy a gun because that makes me very similar to a murderer. |
I called it a slippery slope, much like allowing people to buy guns is. Let's not get into the glaringly obvious. True that the auction system gives gamers the ability to monetize their virtual assets and redeem them at a later date, but it also empowers Sony to monetize things that normally have reasonably no value if they so wish to (which they will). The fact that people will continue to support that though is what makes this worse, but I guess there is a market for everything.
