Sony is begging you: please forget about concord
How dare they try and play a game they paid for.
This is 100% proof Sony is going to write this off as a tax write off
You’ve said something with such absolute certainty that is not making sense to me.
Now I’m not versed in Japanese tax law, but Japan does follow International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). I’m also not versed in the capitalization of video game development expenses.
A business is going to write down their asset based on their ability to generate future revenue from it. With Concord dead on arrival, it would be fair to say that they would write down everything related to the individual game development. If they left any asset on the books it would be related to the IP/trademarks/copyrights/etc (maybe some transferrable technology if they are getting really specific).
I’m not able to make the connection between issuing takedowns on community servers/videos and the accounting write off of an impaired asset. Issuing takedowns seems more in line with IP protection.
I firmly believe that anything “written off” in that manner - this includes movies, too, in particular - should have to be released into the public domain as part of that process.
Any business that’s paying less taxes is harming the public good; we should at least benefit in some small way from that.
It’s more likely they have contractual obligations with marketing companies, retailers, data centers, etc. If a product is discontinued they can get out of those obligations. Sure they will write off a loss and reduce the taxes they pay, but it’s not as if a bigger loss nets them more money somehow.
Really what needs to be regulated is all of the excessive exclusive B2B contracts which mean a company can’t just sell a product for a small amount of money to someone to maintain it when they’re done with that product.
How does community-run servers prevent them from writing off their losses?
I guess the loss could be argued against in court given that there is player activity, even though it’s not endorsed nor hosted by them. Just speculation
Sony refunded everyone who bought the game though.
A seller doesn’t get to walk in your home, hand you a check and take your couch. The same should not be allowed for digital goods. A voluntary refund should never revoke ownership rights. But we don’t actually have ownership rights any more, do we? Or any rights.
Digital ownership is probably going to happen, but it’s going to take a generation of politicians to die off. Once we get more people that understand computers and digital goods aren’t magic, there can be change.
But we don’t actually have ownership rights any more, do we?
When it comes to video games, we’ve never had ownership rights. Buying a game has always been just buying a license. The only thing that’s changed is that now publishers have a mechanism with which to enforce it.
That is absolutely untrue. Games used to be sold as a physical object containing the game files. No serial numbers to redeem, no servers, no downloads or updates. Sometimes you’d get a booklet with the game that had some codes in it that the game would ask for on startup to make making copies a little more difficult, but that was it.
You’d literally have everything you need just on the CD, disk, or cartridge. We 100% owned the game and the system it was played on, and the only way to revoke that would have been to physically break into your house and steal it.
This whole games as services thing is about 20 years old tops, and it wasn’t even remotely approaching the standard for quite a while after that.
Fuck that, when I bought Chrono Trigger for the SNES, I owned that game. I still own that game. Nintendo has not broken into my home to rescind my license to a physical cartridge that I purchased.
Legally speaking, you own the physical cartridge, but you only own a license to the software on the cartridge.
Practically speaking, no one will break into your house to control what you do with the cartridge.
I don’t see why I should pay for a license, especially when it can be revoked any time for any reason. That’s just not a valuable product
There was a physical release
To be fair, everyone was offered a refund for that game. So technically they probably haven‘t paid for it anymore.
I still totally agree that Sony shouldn‘t go after private Concord servers. This game is very interesting, because it was an unbelievable failure despite having pretty solid gameplay. And preserving that on private servers provides a great way for other developers to learn, and maybe prevent, the tons of other issues leading to the game‘s failure.
they don’t even run their servers anymore, it’s not like the fan servers are competing with them…
is sony turning into another nintendo/disney? flexing their copyright muscle just because they can?
is sony turning into another nintendo/disney?
A corporation founded during the Showa era will always be anal retentive about intellectual property.
They have always been this way:
Although Sony ultimately did not win any of its lawsuits against them, Bleem! had to shut down when the huge court costs became too much for the small company to handle. Bleem! shut down in November 2001…
Turning into? They’ve always been this way. It’s been like 20 years since they decided it was ok to install rootkits on people’s PCs to protect their IP rights.
Sony has been shit for much longer than 20 years, kiddo.
It’s interesting. I did a quick search, and couldn’t quickly find many complaints about them before 2000, but technical people complained a lot about Sony products back then. The biggest complaint was that Sony did everything themselves. So, every component inside a piece of electronic equipment was made by Sony, and every time they could get away with it, it would have a custom footprint or custom specs, so that it was impossible to find replacement parts without getting them directly from Sony at huge markups.
I said always, I just used an example from this century. Your comment does remind me of the UMD disks and their propriety sd cards
They’ve kinda always been shit to gamers, they just hid it from console gaming; PC gamers frequently got shafted by SOE.
I don’t even think they really hid it from the console space. Their entire PS3 launch was peak hubris. They just don’t step on rakes as much as Microsoft does, and Nintendo would shoot a litter of puppies if it helped them protect their IP rights, so they look better in comparison.
I think it’s more to do with its ongoing clash against Tencent. If they allow this to keep going, it may damage their chances on that side as well.
How weird is it that there are people who liked Concord so much that they spent all of their time and money to get something patched together just so they could play it again.
Didn’t it overwhelmingly bomb and had like no players towards the end?
Anyways good for them and screw Sony lawyers.
IIRC, it wasn’t a terrible game. It just wasn’t a unique enough game to compete in the space. Just another hero shooter. Just another live service. And thus it failed to meet overinflated expectations. Sony didn’t give it any time to grow or adapt.
Sony went all in on live service games, expecting them to all do gangbusters and to do so for forever. Their high expectations are slipping and failing to be met with Destiny. They bought Bungie for live service games too.
Oh, and Marathon. That one is in a precarious spot. Being delayed after an unexpectedly rough public beta.
Marathon being brought back as a live servive extraction shooter/battle royale was an immediate turn off for me, personally.
Sony seemed to want it to fail. Reviewers only got their hands on it shortly before release. Most didn’t like it. Marvel Rivals was dropping soon. It was doomed.
So let me get this straight… They’re still burning money on Concord through legal costs? Just walk away guys.
Sony is doing a Tax write off 100%
Hurry! Release the server code on the high seas before the Sony lawyers find you!!!
Another DMCA abuse
Must be nice to simply write off 250+ million. Sony needs to be broken up.
Because of course they would, what a bunch of dicks.
Sony: we think it’s the gamers fault the game isn’t successful.
gamers: hey, can we play it then?
Sony: fuck off
Nintendo: I am the shittiest!
Sony: Hold my beer…
Man, can’t have nothing!
Sony being wankers? No surprise there
Seeing G*mers attitudes change on Sony between this and Palworld. Is a tonal whiplash to say the least.
